Manifesting a manifesto
"To proclaim a manifesto you have to want: A.B.C., thunder against 1 , 2 , 3, lose your patience and sharpen your wings to conquer and spread a's, h's, e's little and big, sign, scream, swear, arrange the prose in a form of absolute and irrefutable evidence, prove your non-plus-ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life just as the latest appearance of a whore proves the essence of God . . . .
I am writing a manifesto and I don't want anything. I say however certain things and I am on principle against manifestoes, as I am also against principles . . . . I am writing this manifesto to show that you can do contrary actions together, in one single fresh breath; I am against action; for continual contradiction, for affirmation also, I am neither for nor against and I don't explain because I hate common sense."
Tristan Tzara, "Dada Manifesto," 1918
I have been thinking a lot about the end game for this research. I probably should have started earlier - there's a lot of conventional wisdom that basically says “think about the Viva from day 1” - but I don't think when I started this PhD I would have been able to. Or at least, if I had done, one of two things would have happened: I either would have had to change the idea anyway, or I would not have been able to explore other ideas as I would have felt tied to a single outcome. Knowing me, the second is more likely. And that's OK - this whole research project is essentially about curiosity; about trusting the process, and allowing outcomes to develop as you go, often through reflection. So, as I begin to understand my own research more, I have been thinking more about how I could deliver some of my learnings about playfulness. Not only my learnings, but my experiences, my beliefs.
I've previously written about developing a set of rules for plork. But as I've talked about before, what has proven difficult is in a genuinely well-meaning desire to make them functional, I wonder if they don't quite hit the nail on the head. Which got me thinking - why do they need to be applicable to everyone? What I'm not trying to do, actually, is make something all encompassing. What this research is about really is demonstrating what I believe to be the value a notion like plork - or a methodology such as playfulness. As such, I have come to think that perhaps, in writing my rules for plork, what I might be writing - or beginning to write - is a manifesto.
In her book Manifesto: A Century of Isms (2001) Mary Ann Caws lays out a brief timeline and history of art/artists manifestos, beginning with possibly the first artist’s manifesto, Symbolist James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s The Ten O’Clock (1885). In fact, the origins of the artist’s manifesto go back to Freidrich Engels and Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848) which set the bar “for later aesthetic proclomations and political statements” (Caws 2001, p.i). It is Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto (1909, reprinted in Marinetti, 1972) that became the “ur-manifesto” (Caws 2001 p.i), the manifesto from which all other artistic manifestos are spawned, primarily due to its combination of aesthetic and rhetorical, poetic cleverness.
In her preface essay Nowness and newness, Caws describes a manifesto as a “document of an ideaology, crafted to convince and convert” (ibid. p.xx). The manifesto - now an artistic genre in itself - is “Always opposed to something, particular or general, it has not only to be striking but to stand up straight” (ibid). Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris, in their preface to Poems for the Millienium’s second edition, wrote that the manifesto is both a “personal accounting and a prescription/directive for future acts”.
It is this last description of the manifesto which interests me most, for my research doesn’t overtly seek to be political, or to question the state of art (or animation) in general. What it does seek to do, however, is demonstrate the gap that existed before - and that we must address from this point onwards. And that gap is not just a gap in the sense that nobody has connected plork and animation before - it’s the gap in conversation, the gap where we as an industry of independent film-makers talk about the fact that playfulness is integral to our work.
The problem for me with so many manifestos is that in their earnestness, they come across as sincere to the point of pretentiousness. And I know that’s an unfair judgement, because often I actually enjoy and agree with the subject matter. Max Alexander, the ‘Playful Radical’s A Playful Manifesto (Alexander, no date) is one such text. “This is a manifesto that begins, but will never end”, proclaims Alexander:
“This is a translation of my world to yours. This is a celebration of existence, mind, yours and theirs. This is a public display of affection for each and every creature. This is a protest of the notion that there is a correct way to live. This is a public display of rejection of the idea that one’s usefulness is a measure of their humanity. This is a love lette rto joy to sadness to fear and discovery”
How could I not agree with all those points? Alexander’s views on play and politics and life put across in his Manifesto are clearly in line with my own. So what is it that irks me somewhat about manifestos such as this?
Reflecting on this, I think it is closely tied to the idea of plork. Alexander’s Manifesto is a statement about the world - about who we are, what play is, how we feel. But there’s very little actionable advice in there. In a sense, its not output focussed. It’s an introspective essay on play and that play is open and for everyone, and our lives could benefit from more of it. So, how? How do we play more?
This is in stark contrast to Pitt and Davis’ manifesto Seriously, Play! (no date), a 21-point set of ways creative practitioners can play more. In essence, what they have begun is a form of manifesto for plork, the main difference being they don’t actually mention plork. However, what they have written is a set of ways in which play can be specifically made useful for work. Unlike Alexander’s Playful Manifesto, what Caws might refer to as essay-manifesto (although, accompanied by illustrations it is more zine- or pamphlet manifesto), Pitt and Davis have produced a list of behaviour change suggestions, and reasons why they would benefit your practice. In this regard, it is a “document of an ideology, crafted to convince and convert” (Caws 2001, p.xx) - it qualifies as a manifesto. But there’s something in there that niggles away at the back of my mind that doesn’t quite fit with what my personal view on creative playfulness. And maybe that’s just it - Pitt and Davis focus on play, where I have a strong feeling that playfulness is significantly more interesting and useful.
But perhaps there’s something else. I’ll be the first to admit that when I found their manifesto, I was a bit concerned - someone else had got there first! Someone else had written a manifesto about play and creativity! Well, of course they had - the Dadaists did it over a hundred years ago, then the Surrealists, then FLUXUS did it after that. (dates) More recently, Eric Zimmerman’s Manifesto for a Ludic Century (2013) connects the dots between game art and playfulness. And, although they connect creative work and play, Pitt and Davis don’t mention plork; what they are describing is essentially plork, but again it is overlooked in favour of the much more common ‘play’ and ‘playfulness’.
So if it’s not the concern about duplication of ideas that makes me uneasy about their manifesto, what is it? Perhaps, in contrast to Alexander’s Playful Manifesto, it’s that it doesn’t feel enough like a manifesto. To be clear, that says nothing about the quality of what they’re talking about; indeed, many of the points are points which feature in my own Rules for Plork and feel like they’re going to play a significant role in my own manifesto. But as a manifesto, Seriously, Play! doesn’t take itself…well, too seriously. And perhaps that’s the problem. It doesn’t conform to Caws’ idea of a “high manifesto”, at least - it doesn’t so much shout about the “we” and the “they”, the “battlefield” of what was past and what the manifesto preaches and the new way of thinking; instead, it calmly suggest some things to try.
“[the] high manifesto…is often noisy in its appearance, like a typographical alarm or implicit rebel yell. It calls for capital letters, loves bginess, demands attention” (Caws 2001 p.xx)
I’m not entirely sure what been i’ve got in my bonnet about Seriously, Play! Perhaps there’s more ego involved in my thinking there than I am able to admit right now. As I’ve mentioned, I agree with so much of what they’re saying, that perhaps it’s the way they’re saying it - or the fact that they’re saying it at all. So what might a manifesto for plork - or even, plorkful animation - look like?
I come back to Corita Kent and her classroom rules, and the subsequent ‘Rules for Plork’ I was experimenting with. I think these become the foundation of a manifesto for plork. In fact, I wonder whether a manifesto for plork is a manifesto at all, or if it is just that - a list of suggested rules. But in writing rules for plork, in doing this research at all, I am in many ways saying that something has been, and something needs to change. If nothing else, in arts HE pedagogy, if not in animation as a whole. But by creating rules, we are creating something more definite, more specific, more exacting that suggestions. And rules, as we know, are integral to play - they give you something to play inside, to play with, to play around.
“I make rules for all of my films. The Dogme rules were decided to make me concentrate on all the things I was beginning to get good at, like tracking shots. And so for every film, I had rules, I just change them so I don’t make the same film again.” - Lars von Trier (quoted in Bose, 2021)
In architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Autobiography, he describes his own manifesto of sorts. This was a list of ‘Fellowship Assets’ for those who wanted to work with him; a set of attitudes he expected his apprentices to adopt. In just 10 requirements, these ‘Assets’ cover wide ground from the interpersonal, to the creative. Without saying as much, they describe many of the same principles as Corita - the preparedness and ability to deal with failure (sense of proportion), for example. But they also set the tone for the Lloyd Wright’s practice as a whole - to see, feel and follow nature, to be imaginative and - if I may - playful:
- An honest ego in a healthy body.
- An eye to see nature
- A heart to feel nature
- Courage to follow nature
- The sense of proportion (humor)
- Appreciation of work as idea and idea as work
- Fertility of imagination
- Capacity for faith and rebellion
- Disregard for commonplace (inorganic) elegance
- Instinctive cooperation
On the Huffington Post’s article How to Write Your Manifesto in 5 Steps (2014) the last step they suggest is by far and away the most interesting one: Live It. A manifesto isn’t just a set of ideas, or maybes. Frank Lloyd Wright expected his apprentices to live by the Fellowship Assets. Perhaps it’s not where you are now, but it’s where you aim to be - it’s what you believe in. It’s what you believe in so much that you don’t just write it down for other people to see; you live it. You are the embodiment of those beliefs. At least for the most part - in Jesper Jargil’s documentary De Iutrede (2003), Vinterberg, von Trier, Kristian Levring and Mogens Rokuv all admitted to having broken the rules of Dogme 95 in one way or another. But that’s another thing - breaking the rules is acceptable; if anything, is it not all part of the fun? In fact, breaking the rules is overtly encouraged in several artist’s manifestos (Ball 1916; Kent 2007; Syms 2017).
The more I think about it, perhaps more than anything this isn’t a manifesto for plork, or play, or playfulness as a methodology. I’m writing a manifesto for myself - to remind myself to act, think, live playfully. The ‘we’ is anyone who feels the same way as I do - it’s animators, animation pedagogues, animation students, creative arts practitioners, non arts practitioners…While the remit of the PhD is more tighter and more specific, in being even more focussed, perhaps the manifesto can speak to more people.
Caws talks about cases being made for “the poem-manifesto, the painting-manifesto, the aphorism-manifesto, the essay-manifesto” (Caws 20010 p.xxix). Perhaps what I’m building towards is an animation-manifesto. Or, perhaps, a plork-manifesto; a manifesto where “At its peak of performance, its form creates its meaning” (ibid. p.xx); where something being made through the playful processes reinforces and disseminates the importance of said processes.
All in all, in doing this, I think about my rules, and I think about how I must be to keep this idea going:
I must be brave
I must be curious
I must be kind
I must be honest
and I must be an optimist.
References
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ALEXANDER, M. A Playful Manifesto. playradical.com.
BOSE, S. D. 2021. 10 essential films from the Dogme 95 movement [Online]. https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/10-essential-films-from-the-dogme-95-movement/: Far Out Mgazine. Available: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/10-essential-films-from-the-dogme-95-movement/ [Accessed 21-08-2023 2023].
CAWS, M. A. 2001. Manifesto: A Century of Isms, Licoln and London, University of Nebraska Press.
CHILDISH, B. & THOMSON, C. 1999. The Stuckists [Online]. Stuckism.com. Available: https://www.stuckism.com/stuckistmanifesto.html [Accessed 21-08-2023 2023].
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POPOVA, M. 2016. Do: Sol LeWitt’s Electrifying Letter of Advice on Self-Doubt, Overcoming Creative Block, and Being an Artist. The Marginalian [Online]. Available from: https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/09/09/do-sol-lewitt-eva-hesse-letter/ [Accessed 21-08-2023 2023].
SHRIGLEY, D. 2014. Weak messages create bad situations : a manifesto, Edinburgh, Canongate.
SYMS, M. 2017. The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto [Online]. Rhizome.org. Available: https://rhizome.org/editorial/2013/dec/17/mundane-afrofuturist-manifesto/ [Accessed 21-08-2023 2023].
TAMES, D. 2020. Notes on the Artist Manifesto. kino-eye.com [Online]. Available from: https://kino-eye.com/2020/01/02/notes-on-the-artist-manifesto/ [Accessed 21-08-2023 2023].
TZARA, T. 1918. Dada Manifesto. In: CAWS, M. A. (ed.) Approximate Man and Other Writings. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
WRIGHT, F. L. 1979. An autobiography, [S.l.], Quartet Books.
MARINETTI, F. T. 1972. Selected Writings, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.