A recent project at Goldsmiths, run by Laura Potter and Rosario Hurtado, focuses on the creation of a design manifesto and the actions stemming from them. This has got me thinking about my own manifesto; do I have one? Do I agree with manifestos per se? I turn to Tristan Tzara;
I am writing a manifesto and I don't want anything, I say however certain things and I am on principle against manifestos, as I am also against principles… I am writing this manifesto to show you can do contrary action 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’m starting to write my own manifesto, one that is contradictory, multiple and schizophrenic. A manifesto that deterritorializes and reterritorializes my position in design. Lacking in common sense. Who wants the most common of sense? Provoke the questions:
To be in the book. To figure in the book of questions, to be part of it. To be responsible for a word or a sentence, a stanza or chapter. To be able to say: “I am in the book. The book is my world, my country, my roof, and my riddle. The book is my breath and my rest.” I get with the page that is turned. I lie down with the page put down. To be able to reply: “I belong to the race of words, which homes are built with” – when I know full well that the answer is still another question, that this home is constantly threatened. I will evoke the book and provoke the questions. (Edmond Jabès, To be in the Book, 1963)
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