The Sensible Artist’s Manifesto
May 4th, 2007 by jesse
I would love your feedback on a fun document I started yesterday.
Jesse Hensel
5/2/07
The Sensible Artist’s Manifesto
Foundational Assumptions:
- We each search for what will make us happy now as well as what will allow for our future happiness.
- Given that every individual has lived a different life – each individual has something to teach and learn from every other individual. Therefore, one life cannot be valued over another.
The Sum of These Assumptions:
- The more individuals benefit from an action, and the longer it benefits them, the more positive an action is.
- If an individual’s actions do not come at another individual’s expense they cannot be condemned.
- Actions that are detrimental to other individuals’ lives should be avoided. Weather they are intentional or unintentional negative actions are ultimately disrespectful, shortsighted and self-indulgent.
Additional Assumption:
- Direct actions, concrete examples, concise statements, symbolic gestures, fictional narratives, humor, and beauty have the potential to be effective ways to teach and inspire individuals.
Application of These Assumptions on the Field of Art:
- Motivation: Sensible Artists enjoy creating artwork, and use art to teach and inspire.
- Medium: Sensible Artists choose materials that enhance their statements. Sensible materials are collected, processed, distributed, and disposed in a sustainable manner that does not exploit labor or damage the environment. Sensible Artists do not need to hurt others to make positive statements.
- Process: Sensible production methods aptly elucidate concepts, and do not negatively impact other individuals. Sensible Artists have an appreciation for and understanding of materials because they directly participate in the production process. If a Sensible Artist chose to hire individuals to create the manifestations of their concepts they would construct a positive working environment, pay a living wage, and give laborers ample credit for their role in the creative process. Sensible Artists enjoy collaboration and provide positive examples of what is possible when people work together.
- Subject Matter: Sensible Artists make insights into complicated subject matter because they have extensive knowledge of the concepts that they work with.
- Position: Sensible positions are informed, logical and appropriate. Sensible Artists are sensitive to divergent opinions, but take the Sensible position regardless of its popularity.
- Representation: Sensible Artists do not portray their subject matter in and unjust manner. Sensible artists understand the histories of the symbols they employ and avoid misappropriation, misapplication and unintended subtexts.
- Exhibition: Sensible Artists make their work available to the public. Viewers benefit from seeing the work of Sensible Artists.
right on jesse, thanks for posting!
for anyone who doesn’t know, jesse is a west coast meerkat correspondent & art student friend in dreamy San Francisco. this manifesto is coming out of one of his grad classes (i believe)?
one piece of feedback i’d give is on the first point in the second section (“The more individuals benefit from an action, and the longer it benefits them, the more positive an action is.”)
i think you’re right on, j, in describing the way actions–or in this case, art–should be examined for both their short and long term benefit. this is one way to distinguish between art that fulfills and products that merely satiate, like needle drugs or reality TV.
but one notion that i think this manifesto overlooks is that, because we’re imperfect human beings, we can only make educated guesses at what the long term benefits of our actions (or art) will be. when we start evaluating and judging actions/art, we quickly find that people have very different perceptions of what the long and short term benefits of actions/art really are.
(i.e. what about pieces of art, like complicated poems, which may be dissatisfying for years before finally yielding great benefit when you understand them in a different way? or what if someone’s understanding of what is beneficial changes over time, as one’s taste in art surely does?)
so i think it becomes pretty important that documents like these don’t try to articulate universal standards (which can all become ossified, predetermined and contradictory) but try instead to lay out processes through which the benefit/detriment of actions and art can be determined in a given context (processes that can be continually invented by those who participate in them.)
in my mind, that’s the difference between a moralistic vs. an ethical system, or between an exhortation to “do the right thing” vs. a call to “go about determining what the right thing is in the best way possible.”
Comment by elliott — May 7, 2007 @ 9:47 am
Thanks for commenting, as well as for the fancy formatting.
Comment by Jesse — May 7, 2007 @ 11:24 am