After the success of Charles Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the issuing of such statements became popular with all kinds of political, social, and artistic organizations. Art manifestos were a feature of many Modern art movements of the early 20th century and they have continued to be issued by new groups ever since. Circulated in magazines, journals, newspapers, and now the web, the documents served as an easy platform for art movements to renounce the outdated ideas of the past and outline new aesthetic and thematic frameworks.
Generally manifestos contain a brief introduction followed by an enumerated list of demands and then some commentary. Usually they are written in a revolutionary or even incendiary tone. In his dada manifesto, Feeble Love & Bitter Love II (1920), Tristan Tzara’s describes the art manifesto as follows.
A manifesto is a communication made to the whole world, whose only pretension is to the discovery of an instant cure for political, astronomical, artistic, parliamentary, agronomical and literary syphilis. It may be pleasant, and good-natured, it’s always right, it’s strong, vigorous and logical. Apropos of logic, I consider myself very likeable.
I’ve said before that art is in a slump. These days art is dominated by the page-view-click-thru critics. With their penchant for hype and smarmy language, the blogant-garde has gone from a cornucopias “chorus of voices” into a homogeneous indiecrat PR machine. If you think that’s a grim situation, I don’t even want to get into god and politics. Because the world needs revolution, and because I find myself very likeable, Mr. Tzara’s words strike me.
The reasons are all the usual suspects: cheap cameras, cheap bandwidth, cheap blah blah blah. The deluge of short form video is upon us. Artist, filmmaker, and photographer Nathan Swango of Freeworkingspace.com proposes:
Laying awake I recall an idea shared with me by a good friend, his thought is that anything is watchable as long as it is short. Lately it seems true, a new wave in videography and digital filmmaking has emerged in the form of amatuer filmmaking and internet streaming video. Enormous trends have been set already, funny cats, inside jokes, personal video journals, sexy-smoking-housewives, music video parodies, etc. More often we are seeing professional concepts being inspired by amatuer videographers. The mass contribution continues non-stop and it is a global phenomenon.
Here is my list of rules for Short Concept Digital Video, this is an experiment:
1. One minute in length (60 seconds).
2. Up to but not more than four edits.
3. Camera is hand held.
4. Sound must be original.
5. Playback demensions must be 320X240.
6. No credit to the director.
7. Quick, Cheap, Easy but no sacrifice to the integrity and the quality of the idea.
8. Showcased in a digital public forum, i.e. the internet, youtube.com, Google Video.
Nate doesn’t think like the hand held camera rule and I definitely agree. There seems to be consensus that the 4 cut limit is at least very interesting even if there is disagreement on the exact number of cuts. My favorite rule is #6 but I think it contradicts #4. To me rule number #4 totally flies in the face of what digital short form video is. Digitized information has no “final cut.” Putting something on the web is implicitly giving permission to have your work remixed, mashed up, and made fun of.
Go read the manifesto and check out Freeworkingspace.com.
