Something is rotten in the current art systems. So we think it’s time to start thinking about things.
Why? Because we believe that art is an important value and key-factor in shaping our future into a sustainable one. A future that goes beyond money, traveling, luxury, status symbols and higher-faster-further-thinking. Along with an intact environment, art is the foundation and source for a dynamic, interesting, reflecting individual life in a complex digital world. And we need this rise of personal complexity. The variety of self-expressing and making art is a crucial resource to keep us humans connected and in a stable balance. We love the approach of systems art and want to revive and develop it further.
- Make art not business. You’re an artist not a brand.
- Experiment! Stay playful and curious.
(Like Wittgensteins „Language Game“ art is also a form of non-deterministic communication game.) - Irony is an act of freedom.
(Don’t take yourself too seriously. We are all in this shit together and have to solve bigger problems right now.) - Embrace diversity.
(See Ashby’s Law of requisite variety and Heinz von Foerster’s ethical imperative) - Tell new stories (mix-and-match the old ones).
(Let’s find new Cross-Over-Narratives to overcome capitalistic society.) - Fail fast, fail forward.
(Shame and distress can be powerful tipping-points.) - Stay autonomous.
(Autonomy is the most powerful force of art. See Theodor W. Adorno and Max Weber: The utopian potential of art.) - The process is art, we are social sculptures.
(It’s fun to exchange and evolve together.) - We prefer self-organized, heterarchical networks to exclusive hierarchies and snobby art institutions. (Let’s hack the systems with guerrilla art and Scrum)
- Regardless our personal autonomy we see ourselves as a part of a collaborating, sustainable, circular society and environment and of various interconnected dynamic systems.
(Kontext matters. That’s why we use agile and systems thinking methods like holistic thinking, Gestalttheorie, phenomenology, constructivism and scrum, system pertubations and a new approach of epic theatre )
Version 2024-08-30
See also
Donella Meadows: Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
https://www.artistunderground.co.uk/
„Here the term ‚language-game‘ is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, of a form of life.“ (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
„For remember that in general we don’t use language according to strict rules– it hasn’t been taught to us by means of strict rules, either. We, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare language with a calculus preceding to exact rules.“ (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Garth Hallett, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1977). “A companion to Wittgenstein’s „Philosophical investigations“”, Cornell Univ Press)
(This systems art manifesto is agile and will evolve constantly with new insights.)
Ute Hamelmann 