Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
With essays by
Burcu Dogramaci
Anna-Catharina Gebbers / Udo Kittelmann
Reinhard Spieler
Darkness. A burning and sparking fuse cord of a large We see hundreds of sparks out-of-focus, drifting away, until
fireworks rocket, seen in close-up and extreme slow motion. the rocket ignites in a spray of fire
I am against action;
I am for continuous contradiction: for affirmation, too. I am neither for nor
against and I do not explain because I hate common sense. TZ 1918
I am writing a manifesto
because I have nothing to say. PS 1920
Does anyone think he has found a psychic base common to all mankind?
How can one expect to put order into the
chaos that constitutes that infinite and
shapeless variation
man? TZ 1918
Karl Marx
Friedrich Engels
Tristan Tzara
Philippe Soupault
5
Lucio Fontana
John Reed Club of New York
Constant Nieuwenhuys
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Guy Debord
We call upon all honest intellectuals,
all writers and artists, to abandon decisively
the treacherous
illusion
that art can exist
for arts sake
A foggy day on a field amidst the industrial ruins of an greasy dirty coat with a trolley full of plastic bags, and his
abandoned old factory complex. We see the fuse cord from old black dog who barks at the rockets. Cut to the exploding
the prologue, once again in in close-up and slow motion, but rockets in the winter sky, now seen from a drones perspec-
this time in daylight. The rocket takes off. Cut to three old tive underneath us. Far below are the three women, and the
women, as amused as children, who continue to ignite a few homeless man who slowly starts to walk away. Slow drone
more rockets. In the background, two boys are flying a kite. flight through the post-industrial landscape, away from the
In the foreground is a grumpy bearded homeless man in a scenery, across the roofs of abandoned factories
voice over We are continuing the evolution of art. The ideas are irrefutable. They exist
LF 1946 as seeds within the social fabric, awaiting expression by artists and thinkers.
Now that these ideals have become a fiction with the disappearance of their
economic base,
8
Manifesto Situationism
In this period of change, the role of the artist can only be that of the
revolutionary:
it is his duty to destroy
the last remnants of an empty, irksome aesthetic, arousing the creative
instincts still slumbering unconscious in the human mind.
Our art is the art of a revolutionary period,
simultaneously the reaction of a world going under
and the herald of a new era. CN 1948
We call upon all honest intellectuals, all writers and artists, continues, now
screaming into a
to abandon decisively the treacherous illusion megaphone in his
hand
that art can exist for arts sake, or that the artist can remain remote from
the historic conflicts in which all men must take sides. We call upon them
to break with bourgeois ideas which seek to conceal the violence and fraud,
the corruption and decay of capitalist society. We urge them to forge a new
art that shall be a weapon in
the battle for a new and superior world. JRC 1932
To those who dont understand us properly, we say with an irreducible talking continues,
into camera
scorn: We, of whom you believe yourselves to be the judges,
9
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Umberto Boccioni
Carlo Carr
Luigi Russolo
Giacomo Balla
Gino Severini
Guillaume Apollinaire
Dziga Vertov
Look at us! Were not exhausted yet!
A broker in a huge stock-exchange hall full of computers, looks at her first from a birds-eye view, then draws closer to
among colleagues, everybody absorbed in work. The camera her and finally pulls back to reveal the entire space.
voice over My friends and I stayed up all night. We were sitting under mosque lamps
hanging from filigreed brass domes, star-studded as our souls,
all aglow with the concentrated brilliance
of an electric heart.
For many hours, wed been trailing our age-old indolence back and forth
over richly adorned, oriental carpets, debating at the uttermost boundaries
of logic and filling up masses of paper with our frenetic writings. Immense
pride filled our hearts, for we felt that at that hour we alone were vigilant
and unbending, like magnificent beacons or guards in forward positions,
facing an enemy of hostile stars, which watched us closely from their celestial
encampments. Alone we were, with the floundering drunks, with the
uncertain beating of our wings, along the city walls
euphoric, voice over At long last all the myths and mystical ideas
See there, the Earths very first dawn! Nothing can equal the splendour of
the suns red sword slicing through our millennial darkness
for the very first time!
We believe that this wonderful world has been further enriched by
a new beauty:
aggressive action,
life at the double, the slap and the punching fist.
FTM 1909 We wish to glorify war, and beautiful ideas worth dying for.
We will elevate all attempts at originality, however daring, however violent.
The suffering of a man is of the same interest to us as the suffering of an
electric lamp.
12
Manifesto Futurism
We shall sing of the great multitudes she turns her head
towards the camera,
who are roused up by work, pleasure or rebellion; of the pulsating, nightly starts talking on one
pitch level
ardour of arsenals and shipyards, ablaze with their violent electric moons;
of railway stations, voraciously devouring smoke-belching serpents; of fac-
tories hanging from the clouds by their twisted threads of smoke; and of
the lissome flight of the aeroplane, whose propeller flutters like a flag in the talking on pitch level
wind, seeming to applaud, like a crowd excited. ends
FTM 1909
Do you really want to waste all your best energies in this unending, futile
veneration for the past, from which you emerge fatally exhausted, dimin-
ished, trampled down? FTM 1909
Look around you! Standing tall on the roof of the world, yet again, we hurl
our defiance at the stars! Our eyes, spinning like propellers, take off into the FTM 1909
Let the reign of the divine Electric Light begin at last. concluding resolutely
13
Bruno Taut
Antonio SantElia
Coop Himmelb(l)au
Robert Venturi
Glassy and bright a new world shines out
in the early light; it is sending out its first rays
Everlasting Change
Manifesto Architecture
A factory worker gets up very early in the morning. We see house and rides on a moped through the city to her job
her a single mother first in her apartment: morning (she works as a crane operator in a garbage incineration
rituals, strong coffee, preparing a breakfast for her daughter plant, monotonous job, quite sombre). Having entered the
who is still sleeping, writing a note for her. She leaves her building, she changes in the locker room and starts working.
beneficial demolitions.
Let us overturn monuments,
pavements,
and flights of steps;
let us sink the streets and squares; let us raise the level of the city. We must
invent and rebuild it like an immense and tumultuous shipyard agile,
mobile and dynamic in every detail;
and our houses must be like
ASE 1914 gigantic machines.
16
Manifesto Architecture
In the distance shines our tomorrow. Hurray for the transparent, the clear!
Alive or dead.
If cold, then cold as a block of ice.
If hot, then hot as a blazing wing.
Architecture must blaze. CH 1980
17
Vasily Kandinsky
Franz Marc
Barnett Newman
Wyndham Lewis
We do not need the obsolete props
of an outmoded and antiquated legend
We are freeing
ourselves
of the impediments
of memory,
association,
nostalgia, legend
and myth
A private board meeting in the villa of the CEO who has party smoking on the terrace, chatting and drinking
invited everybody on this special occasion to present a new until she calls the meeting; then everybody takes their places
concept for the company. The board members enjoy the and listens while she talks.
Our vortex is not afraid of the Past: it has forgotten its existence.
The Future is distant, like the Past, and therefore sentimental.
20
Manifesto Vorticism / Blue Rider / Abstract Expressionism
BLAST blast
sets out to be an avenue for all those vivid and violent ideas that could
reach the public in no other way.
blast
will be popular, essentially. It will not appeal to any particular class, but
to the fundamental and popular instincts in every class and description of
people: to the individual.
The moment a man feels or realizes himself as an artist, he ceases to belong
to any milieu or time.
blast
is created for this timeless, fundamental artist that exists in everybody.
blast
presents an art of individuals.
We want those simple and great people found everywhere.
21
Manuel Maples Arce
Vicente Huidobro
Naum Gabo
Anton Pevzner
Truth never occurs outside our own selves.
Things have no conceivable intrinsic value and their poetic parallels
only flourish in an inner dimension
In my glorious isolation,
I am illuminated
by the marvellous
incandescence
of my electrically
charged nerves
A Monstrous Joke
Manifesto Stridentism / Creationism
A private party in the backstage area of a performance drummer, a bassist and a guitarist jamming chaotically.
venue, half rehearsal room, half studio. The party is almost A tattooed guest is sitting alone on a sofa next to a flirting
over, people drinking and doing coke, a lonely dancer, a couple, gazing in abstraction and mumbling to herself.
a monstrous joke.
The whole world is conducted like an
amateur band.
jumps up from the And who raised the question of sincerity?
sofa, screaming to the
musicians and into Just a moment, ladies and gentlemen, while we shovel on more coal.
camera
Who of us is the most sincere?
Those of us who purify and crystallize ourselves through the filter of
personal emotions? Or all those artists whose only concern is to ingratiate
themselves with the amorphous crowd of a scanty audience? An audience
of retrograde idiots and blacklegging art dealers?
We seek truth
not in the reality of appearances but in the
MMA 1921 reality of thought.
24
Manifesto Stridentism / Creationism
We must create.
Man no longer imitates.
He invents, he adds to the facts of the world, born in Natures breast, new
facts born in his head: a poem, a painting, a statue, a steamer, a car, a plane
We must create.
Thats the sign of our times. VH 1922
I am illuminated
by the marvellous incandescence of my
electrically charged nerves. MMA 1921
25
Naum Gabo
Anton Pevzner
Kazimir Malevich
Olga Rozanova
Aleksandr Rodchenko
I have transformed myself in the zero of form
I say to all:
Abandon
love!
abandon
aestheticism!
abandon
the baggage
of wisdom!
A scientist in a white protective suit working in a high- laboratory, covered all over with the abstract-geometrical
tech laboratory, wandering through the building some- pattern of sound-absorbing elements, in which a weird
where in the background a poster of a prehistoric man, lost object that looks like a horizontal version of the monolith
in thoughts like Rodins Thinker until reaching a large from 2001 A Space Odyssey floats in the air.
I have transformed myself in the zero of form and have fished myself out of
the rubbishy slough of academic art.
Objects have vanished like smoke; I have destroyed the ring of the horizon
and got out of the circle of objects: this accursed horizon ring that has
imprisoned the artist and leads him away from
complexity.
28
Manifesto Suprematism / Constructivism
The Venus de Milo is a graphic example of decline. Its not a real woman,
but a parody.
Intuitive form should arise out of nothing. Such forms will not be r epetitions starts talking on one
pitch level, looking
of living things in life, but will themselves be a living thing. Nature is a living at us
picture, and we can admire her. But in repeating or tracing the forms of
nature, we have nurtured our consciousness with a false conception of art.
I say to all: Abandon love, abandon aestheticism, abandon the baggage of voice over continues,
now coming from the
wisdom, for in the new culture, your wisdom is ridiculous and insignificant. floating monolith,
louder, climax
Only dull and impotent artists veil
their work with sincerity.
Art requires truth, not sincerity. KM 1916
29
Tristan Tzara
Francis Picabia
Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes
Paul luard
Louis Aragon
Richard Huelsenbeck
Here we cast anchor in rich ground. Ghosts drunk on energy,
we dig the trident into unsuspecting flesh
I am against systems
the most
acceptable system
is on principle
to have none
A mourning close friend of the deceased delivering an ora- ceremonial activities: the coffin being carried out of the
tion at a funeral ceremony beside an open grave surrounded church, accompanied by a small brass band, the mourning
by people in black. Earlier, weve observed the typical crowd walking towards the grave, etc.
voice over while we Here we cast anchor in rich ground. Ghosts drunk on energy, we dig the
see the quiet crowd
on the way from the trident into unsuspecting flesh. We are a downpour of maledictions as
church to the grave tropically abundant as vertiginous vegetation; rubber and rain are our sweat,
we bleed and burn with thirst, our blood is vigour.
I say unto you: there is no beginning and we do not tremble, we are not sen-
timental. We are furious wind, tearing the dirty linen of clouds and prayers,
preparing the spectacle of disaster, fire, decomposition. We will put an end
to mourning and replace tears by sirens screeching from one continent to
another. Pavilions of intense joy, and widowers with the sadness of poison.
To lick the penumbra and float in the big mouth filled with honey and
excrement.
I destroy the drawers of the brain and of social organization; I spread
demoralization wherever I go and cast my hand from heaven to hell, my
TT 1918 eyes from hell to heaven.
death.
members and friends
arrives at the grave
FP 1920
You probably enjoy life. But youve got some bad habits. Youre too fond
of what youve been taught to be fond of. Cemeteries, melancholy, the
tragic lover, Venetian gondolas. You shout at the moon. If you werent so
cowardly, sinking under the weight of all those lofty thoughts and non-
existent abstractions youve been forced into, all that nonsense dressed up
as dogma, youd stand up straight and play the massacre game, just like we
do. But youre too scared of no longer believing. You dont understand that
GRD 1920 one can be attached to nothing and be happy.
I am against systems;
the most acceptable system is on principle to have none.
Abolition of logic: Dada.
Abolition of memory: Dada.
Abolition of archaeology: Dada.
TT 1918 Abolition of the future: Dada.
32
Manifesto Dadaism
No more painters, no more writers, no more musicians, no more sculptors, starts talking on
one pitch level into
no more religions, no more republicans, no more royalists, no more imperi- camera
alists, no more anarchists, no more socialists, no more Bolsheviks, no more
politicians, no more proletarians, no more democrats, no more bourgeois,
no more aristocrats, no more armies, no more police, no more fatherlands,
enough of all these imbecilities, no more anything, no more anything,
nothing, NOTHING,
NOTHING, NOTHING. talking on pitch level
ends
LA 1920
Before I come down there among you to tear out your rotten teeth, starts screaming,
spitting out the words
your scab-filled ears, your canker-covered tongue. disdainfully, while
Before I rip off your ugly, incontinent and cheesy little dick the audience con
tinues to listen quietly
Before I thus extinguish your appetite for orgasms, philosophy, pepper and
metaphysical mathematical and poetical cucumbers
Before all of that
Were going to have a great big bath in antiseptic
And were warning you
What we need is works of art that are strong, straight, precise and forever calmer again all of a
sudden, concluding
beyond understanding. Logic is a complication.
Logic is always wrong.
Married to logic, art would live in incest, swallowing its own tail, still part
of its own body, fornicating within itself. TT 1918
The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour snatch
the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life; who, with
bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time.
33
Andr Breton
Lucio Fontana
Farewell to absurd choices, the dreams of dark abyss,
to the artificial order of ideas
Practise Poetry
Manifesto Surrealism / Spatialism
A puppeteer in her workshop full of tools, machines and modelling her alter ego into perfection, interrupting the
puppets on the wall, completely immersed in her work of work from time to time to look at it (as God to his crea-
finishing the head of a puppet that looks and is dressed tion), then abruptly speaking with her voice and moving
exactly like herself. She is absorbed in thought while the puppet according to it.
From mans birth until his death, thought offers no solution of continuity.
Yet a part of our mental world has finally been brought back to light:
the dream.
An ordinary observer attaches so much more importance to waking events
than to those occurring in dreams. Thus the dream finds itself reduced to a
mere parenthesis, as is the night.
36
Manifesto Surrealism / Spatialism
Dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as puppeteer starts talk-
ing, rehearsing with
you can pull the trigger, into the crowd. her alter ego puppet
I believe in the pure joy of the man who sets off from whatever point he continues talking
with the voice of
chooses, along any other path save a reasonable one, her puppet which
and arrives wherever he can. addresses us
Farewell to absurd choices, the dreams of dark abyss, to rivalries, the continues talking,
rehearsing again
prolonged patience. Farewell to the flight of the seasons, the artificial order with the puppet
of ideas, to the ramp of danger, to time for everything! May you only take
the trouble to practise poetry.
This summer the roses are blue; the wood is of glass. The earth, draped in voice over continues
its verdant cloak, makes as little impression upon me as a ghost. It is living
and ceasing to live, which are just imaginary solutions.
37
Claes Oldenburg
I am for an art
that grows up not knowing it is art at all
A mother saying grace before dinner, surrounded by her down. The eldest arrives in a bad mood. The mother sits
family. Earlier weve observed her setting the table together down quietly and starts her prayer. The father arrives late,
with the maid. She calls her three sons. The two younger tucks a napkin into his shirt collar and starts murmuring
ones arrive (after shes called again, more loudly) and sit the text, too, though not knowing it as well as his children.
40
Manifesto Pop Art
I am for art
that unfolds like a map; that you can kiss, like a pet dog.
Which expands and squeaks, like an accordion;
which you can spill your dinner on,
like an old tablecloth.
egg-salting, in-sulting.
pitch level, looking
at us
I am for art falling, splashing, wiggling, jumping, going on and off. continues praying
I am for the art of meows and clatter of cats and for the art of their dumb
electric eyes.
I am for the white art of refrigerators
and their muscular openings and closings.
I am for the art of hearts, funeral hearts or sweetheart hearts, full of nougat.
I am for the art of the finger on a cold window, on dusty steel or in the
bubbles on the sides of a bathtub.
I am for the art of teddy-bears and guns, exploded umbrellas, burning trees,
firecracker ends, chicken bones, and boxes with men sleeping in them.
I am for the art of
41
Yvonne Rainer
Emmett Williams
Philip Corner
John Cage
Dick Higgins
Allen Bukoff
Larry Miller
Eric Andersen
Tomas Schmit
Ben Vautier
George Maciunas
Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Kurt Schwitters
I demand the total inclusion of all materials
from double-track welders to three-quarter size violins
I demand the
total mobilization
of all
artistic forces
to create the total work of art
Flexible Tubes
Are Highly Recommended
Manifesto Fluxus / Merz / Performance
A choreographer with a Russian accent instructing dancers from the side of the stage during a rehearsal. She isnt
of a Moulin Rouge-/ Las Vegas-style show dance company happy with what she sees.
we hear announce-
ments through the
No to spectacle.
loudspeaker next to No to virtuosity.
the choreographer
while the camera No to transformations and magic and make-believe.
pans over the back- No to the glamour and transcendency of the star image.
stage area
No to the heroic.
No to the anti-heroic.
No to trash imagery.
No to involvement of performer or spectator.
No to style.
No to camp.
No to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer.
No to eccentricity.
YR 1965 No to moving or being moved.
Purge
while they keep on
dancing
the world of dead art, imitation, artificial art, abstract art, illusionistic art,
mathematical art. Promote Non Art Reality to be grasped by all peoples,
not only critics, dilettantes and professionals. Promote a revolutionary
GM 1963 flood and tide in Art. Promote living art, anti-art.
44
Manifesto Fluxus / Merz / Performance
say it again, go to work, clear the table, call him again, flush the toilet,
stay young
Now, I will simply do these maintenance everyday things,
and flush them up to consciousness, as Art.
Everything I say is Art is Art.
Everything I do is Art is Art. MLU 1969
I demand the principle of equal rights for all materials, choreographer inter-
rupts rehearsal and
equal rights for able-bodied people, idiots, whistling wire netting, and calls everybody for
thought-pumps. a briefing, talking
to the dancers, and
continuing shout-
Take gigantic surfaces, ing, animating,
encouraging
cloak them in colour and shift them menacingly.
Bend drilling parts of the voids infinitely together. Paste smoothing sur-
faces over one another. Make lines fight and caress one another in generous
tenderness. Flaming lines, creeping lines, surfacing lines. Let points burst
like stars among them and dance a whirling round. Bend the lines, crack
and smash angles, choking revolving around a point. Roll globes whirling
air they touch one another. Collapsible top hats fall s trangled crates boxes.
Make nets firewave and thicken into surfaces. Net the nets. Make veils
blow, cotton drip and water gush. Hurl up air soft and white through thou-
sand candle-power arc lamps.
Then take wheels and axles and make them sing.
Find a sewing machine that yawns. starts talking on
one pitch level into
Take a dentists drill, a meat grinder, a car-track scraper. camera
Take buses and pleasure cars, bicycles, tandems and their tyres.
Take lights and deform them as brutally as you can.
Make locomotives crash into one another, make threads of spider webs,
dance with window frames and break whimpering glass. Explode steam
boilers to make railroad mist. Take petticoats, shoes and false hair, also ice
skates, and throw them into place where they belong, and always at the talking on pitch level
right time. ends
For all I care, take man-traps, automatic pistols, infernal machines, all of continues instructing,
talking calmer now
course in an artistically deformed condition. Flexible tubes are highly rec-
ommended. I demand the total inclusion of all materials, from double-
track welders to three-quarter size violins. Even people can be used.
I demand
the complete mobilization of all artistic forces to create the total work of art.
addressing the
dancers before send-
ing them away
alone on stage, talk-
45
Sol LeWitt
Elaine Sturtevant
Adrian Piper
Art is what surrounds you.
Art does not come from nowhere
or for that matter anywhere
Creativity
does not pop into
the head
Crevasses, Errors,
Daring and Courage
Manifesto Conceptual Art / Minimalism
A newsreader in the TV studio waiting for the countdown news with the typical singsong voice of a newsreader. She
before the live broadcast starts. She is checking her look, starts questioning a reporter (named Cate, like herself) via
going through the texts of the different news items, rehears- live conference and the reporter answers. The reporter is in
ing them quietly to herself, concentrating when the man- an anorak, standing under an umbrella in pouring rain
aging editor announces the countdown, then reading her and stormy weather, reporting live from an outside location.
SL 1969
voice over, while we
observe the prepa-
Ideas can be works of art.
rations for the live In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the
broadcast work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the
planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a per-
functory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind
of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories;
it is intuitive and it is purposeless.
No matter what form the work of art may finally have, it must begin with an
idea. What it looks like isnt too important. It is the process of conception
and realization with which the artist is concerned. Once given physical real-
SL 1967 ity by the artist the work is open to the perception of all, including the artist.
newsreader starts, Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
All current art is fake,
speaking directly into
the camera
48
Manifesto Conceptual Art / Minimalism
And what about art? Can it hold up these harsh blows? Cate? newsreader
ES 2004
Certainly not, Cate, for art is what surrounds you. reporter answers,
or for that matter anywhere. Creativity does not pop into the head. There
are grounds, forces, powers that create and make art a hazardous journey
of leaps, crevasses, errors, daring and courage. Cate? ES 1999
So conceptual art is one way of making art; other ways suit other artists. newsreader, conclud-
ing, speaking directly
Conceptual art is good only when the idea is good. into the camera
SL 1967
49
Stan Brakhage
Jim Jarmusch
Lars von Trier
Thomas Vinterberg
Werner Herzog
Nothing is Original
Steal from
anywhere
that resonates
with inspiration
or fuels your
imagination
Select only things to steal from
that speak directly to your soul
If you do this
your work and theft will be authentic
Authenticity is Invaluable
Originality is Nonexistent
Manifesto Film
A school teacher speaking to a class of eight- to nine-year- around the classroom, observing the kids working on the
olds before handing out exam papers and then walking test and instructing them.
Authenticity is invaluable;
originality is nonexistent.
52
Manifesto Film
I am no longer an artist.
talking on one pitch
level together with the
teacher
53
Epilogue
I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories that would chain me
with my own falseness, my own pitiful fears.
I am a constructor of worlds,
a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody,
a silhouette against the darkening sky.
Tomorrow,
we begin together
LW 1993 the construction of a city.
Lebbeus Woods
54
Manifesto Situationism
56
Manifesto Situationism
57
Manifesto Futurism
58
Manifesto Futurism
59
Manifesto Architecture
60
Manifesto Architecture
61
Manifesto Vorticism / Blue Rider / Abstract Expressionism
62
Manifesto Vorticism / Blue Rider / Abstract Expressionism
63
Manifesto Stridentism / Creationism
Manifesto Stridentism / Creationism
65
Manifesto Suprematism / Constructivism
66
Manifesto Suprematism / Constructivism
67
Manifesto Dadaism
68
Manifesto Dadaism
69
Manifesto Surrealism / Spatialism
70
Manifesto Surrealism / Spatialism
Manifesto Pop Art
72
Manifesto Pop Art
73
Manifesto Fluxus / Merz / Performance
74
Manifesto Fluxus / Merz / Performance
75
Manifesto Conceptual Art / Minimalism
76
Manifesto Conceptual Art / Minimalism
77
Manifesto Film
78
Manifesto Film
79
Manifesto
Foreword
To manifesto is to perform states Alex Danchev in compelling multi-screen installations that carry view-
his introduction to 100 Artists Manifestos: From the ers into surreal, theatrical realms, where the inhabit-
Futurists to the Stuckists (2011). Turning the noun ants are absorbed by the rituals of everyday life. Within
into a verb, Danchev traces a lineage from Karl Marx these episodic arrangements, Rosefeldt uses familiar
and Friedrich Engelss Communist Manifesto (1848) cinematic tropes and devices to explore cultural iden-
to Filippo Tommaso Marinettis The Foundation and tities and myths, social and psychological disruption,
Manifesto of Futurism (1909). The artists manifesto is and themes of dislocation and alienation. Whilst his
positioned here within a historical context that owes narratives are often ambiguous and elliptical, Rose-
as much to dissent and revolution as it does to poetry feldt employs humour and satire to seduce audiences
and theatre. into familiar worlds made strange.
Julian Rosefeldts multi-channel film installation The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, the
Manifesto pays homage to this energetic and various Australian Centre for the Moving Image in M elbourne,
tradition. Drawing on the writings of the Futurists, the Nationalgalerie Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and
Dadaists, Fluxus artists, Situationists and Dogma 95, the Sprengel Museum Hannover are honoured to be
and the musings of individual artists, poets, archi- the commissioning partners for Manifesto, a brilliant
tects, performers and filmmakers such as Kazimir new work by a truly exciting artist. Together we would
Malevich, Sturtevant, Sol LeWitt, Claes Oldenburg, like to thank and congratulate Cate Blanchett and
Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Andr Breton, Bruno Taut, Julian Rosefeldt.
Lebbeus Woods, Yvonne Rainer and Jim Jarmusch,
Rosefeldt has edited and reassembled a collage of Our particular thanks are extended to the Verein
artists manifestos to create a series of striking mono- der Freunde der Nationalgalerie, the Freunde des
logues performed by Australian actor Cate Blanchett. Sprengel Museum Hannover e.V. and the Medien-
board Berlin-Brandenburg, as well as to the co-pro-
Performing these new manifestos while inhabiting ducers, the Burger Collection Hong Kong and the
thirteen different personas among them a school Ruhrtriennale, all of whom generously supported this
teacher, a puppeteer, a newsreader, a factory worker project.
and a homeless man Blanchett gives dramatic life
to these famous words in unexpected contexts. Rose- Manifesto was produced in cooperation with the
feldts work questions whether these passionate state- Bayerischer Rundfunk, to whom we would also like to
ments, composed by artists with utter conviction, have express our special thanks.
survived the passage of time. Can they be applied uni-
versally? How have the dynamics between politics, art
and life shifted? And what is the artists role in society
today? Michael Brand Katrina Sedgwick
Director, Art Gallery of Director, Australian
A Berlin-based artist who came to prominence on the New South Wales Centre for the Moving
cusp of the twenty-first century, Julian Rosefeldt is Image
internationally renowned for his visually opulent and Udo Kittelmann
meticulously choreographed moving image artworks. Director, Nationalgalerie Reinhard Spieler
Inspired equally by art, film, architecture and the his- Staatliche Museen zu Director, Sprengel
tory of popular culture, Rosefeldt creates complex and Berlin Museum Hannover
81
Manifesto
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Manifesto
A flickering coloured shape snakes across the black clearly reflected in the Futurist manifestos. Here, as
screen, its pulsing light accompanied by a growing in Tzaras text, blurring is a purposeful confrontation
hissing noise. For the viewer, it is not immediately with the world as we know it. Rosefeldt thus places
obvious what this encroaching object is. It turns out his filmic blurring in the context of the avant-garde
to be a burning fuse that Julian Rosefeldt is using to movement.
ignite his film project Manifesto. The aim of a mani-
festo, after all, is to demolish traditional views with In Manifesto, Julian Rosefeldt not only examines the
an explosive force. Manifestos call for revolution and concerns and intentions that are so compelling and
herald new eras. Along with the impetus of inten- urgent they must be expressed in the form of a mani-
tionality and performativity, a mood of departure festo; he is also interested in the specific rhetoric of
and subversion is literally inscribed within them, as manifestos and how they create a call to action. This
Rosefeldts introductory film both reveals and obfus- leads him to ask: what do we do by saying something?
cates. This indeterminacy is deliberate. As the flame of At the action level, a manifesto issues a proclamation
the fuse gradually takes shape, enlarged almost to the and makes a postulation. Over and above this, how-
point of abstraction, an off-screen voice announces: ever, it is intended to shape reality in a very concrete
To put out a manifesto you must want: ABC to ful- way. The connection between speaking and acting in a
minate against 1, 2, 3; to fly into a rage and sharpen manifesto can therefore be analyzed both in terms of
your wings to conquer and disseminate little abcs and content and in relation to speech-act theory.
big abcs; to sign, shout, swear; to prove your non plus
ultra; to organize prose into a form of absolute and In a series of lectures delivered at Harvard University
irrefutable evidence.2 in 1955, which were published posthumously under
the title How to Do Things with Words, the British phi-
With these opening lines from his Dada Manifesto losopher John L. Austin (19111960) demonstrates
1918, the Romanian-French artist Tristan Tzara that constative utterances also have a performative
(born Samuel Rosenstock, 18961963) intentionally dimension, and that by issuing an utterance we are
evokes associations with the avant-garde manifestos doing something we are performing an illocution-
of the Futurists, among others, and plays with the ary act.4 In other words: an utterance is invariably an
blatant intentionalism of such texts. From this start- action, and with the aid of linguistic utterances we
ing point, however, he goes on to develop a Dadaist can perform a wide variety of actions.5 Julian Rose-
anti-manifesto that is filled with unsettling ambiguity. feldt explores this theme by developing specific links
His text represents an unspoken but practised anti- between his filmed images and the spoken manifesto
intentionalism: How can one expect to put order texts: does a loudly or quietly spoken phrase leave a
into the chaos that constitutes that infinite and shape- visible trace on a persons physical actions? Is embodi-
less variation: man?3 The blurred imagery in Julian ment intrinsic to the text? And how do the spoken
Rosefeldts introduction is a reference to this critique words alter the perception of the filmed images that
of modernity and the belief in progress that was so are shown concurrently?
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Manifesto
The introduction is the only film in this multipart Enlightenment, the age of revolution was a period
work that does not feature a person on screen. Mani- of social and political upheaval in western societies.
festo clearly wants to show individual characters with Beginning with the American Revolution in 1776 and
their personal struggles, their interactions with others, continuing through the French Revolution of 1789 to
and their cultural and film-historical traditions. And the Revolutions of 1848, it was succeeded by the age
so this first glowing fuse in the darkness is mirrored in of capital (18481875)9: following on from the upris-
a daylight scene: on a misty morning in an industrial ings against the aristocratic, feudal order, The Com-
park, three elderly women can be seen setting off fire- munist Manifesto was intended to mobilize the work-
works like excited young kids. The image has a d istant ing class to take part in a revolutionary overthrow of
echo of the three children playing with fireworks in capitalism.
Michelangelo Antonionis (19122007) movie La
Notte,6 which captures the ennui of the affluent mod- By choosing this line as his opening quotation, Julian
ern bourgeoisie. In the foreground of Rosefeldts film Rosefeldt also highlights the fact that manifestos are
we see a scruffy, bearded man in a grey overcoat, mainly written by young, angry men. Marx had just
dragging a shopping cart full of collected empty bot- turned twenty-nine and Engels twenty-seven when
tles behind him. The film then cuts back to the fire- they demonstrated with this approximately thirty-
works exploding in the sky but now we see them page essay how the written word can fundamentally
from the birds-eye view of a drone. We look down transform the intellectual and political world. Many
upon the three women and the homeless man, who of their statements and declamations have become
slowly moves off as the camera flies over the industrial well-known sayings, including the opening line, A
park and a deep female voice is heard off-screen. The spectre is haunting Europe the spectre of Commu-
speaker is reading excerpts from texts filled with Situ- nism, and the call for action with which The Manifesto
ationist critique of elitism and capitalism, compiled of the Communist Party concludes: Working Men of All
and collaged by Rosefeldt from manifestos written by Countries, Unite!
Aleksandr Rodchenko (18911956), Lucio Fontana
(18991968), Constant Nieuwenhuys (19202005), Following the publication of Marx and Engelss mani-
Guy Debord (19311994) and the John Reed Club of festo in the mid-nineteenth century, the word mani-
New York (1932). In these texts, the artist is hailed as a festo entered the vocabulary of the labour movement
revolutionary and demands are made to abolish com- and became a recognized designation for this kind of
modities, wage labour, technocracy and hierarchy text. As a generic term, however, it remained firmly
life itself is to become art. rooted in political discourse. Although numerous
proclamatory aesthetic texts were also written in the
In his introductory film, Rosefeldt precedes the quota- realm of art and literature over the years, the term
tions from Tzaras text with a line from The Manifesto manifesto was rarely used in these contexts until the
of the Communist Party: All that is solid melts into early twentieth century, when it was adopted by vis-
air.7 This immediately creates a highly ambiguous link ual artists specifically because of its political implica-
between the individual texts, as well as between texts tions. After Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (18761944)
and images, because for Karl Marx (18181883) and unleashed a flood of manifesto writing with his Mani-
Friedrich Engels (18201895) it was clear that the festo of Futurism,10 the avant-garde endowed the genre
bourgeoisie itself could not exist without constantly with some distinctive features: the urgent and precise
revolutionizing all relations of society. Conserving the communication of authorial intent; appellative rhet-
old modes of production in unaltered form had been oric; a combative, provocative style; and frequently
the condition of existence for earlier industrial classes. propagandistic self-promotion.11
Everlasting uncertainty and agitation, on the other
hand, was what distinguished the bourgeois epoch. Julian Rosefeldt recalls the proletarian origins of
politicization with his highly ambiguous portrayal
The Communist Manifesto is in fact the text that is of a factory worker a single mother going through
most frequently associated with the term manifesto. her morning routine of making coffee and preparing
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were commissioned breakfast for her sleeping daughter, and then driv-
by the Communist League to write this work, which ing to work at a waste incineration plant. It is to be
was originally titled Manifest der Kommunistischen assumed that these important survival rituals do not
Partei [The Manifesto of the Communist Party]8 in leave much room for revolutionary activities, yet while
the winter of 1847/48. When it was published in early she roars through the city on her moped, texts can
1848, neither the February Revolution in France be heard from ambitious manifestos by architects
nor the March Revolution in the German Confed- such as Bruno Taut (18801938), Antonio SantElia
eration had yet taken place. Inspired by the spirit of (18881916) and Robert Venturi (b. 1925), or the
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Manifesto
architectural studio Coop Himmelb(l)au, which was Kurt Schwitters (18871948), Richard Huelsenbeck
founded in 1968. Tauts unshakable belief in the power (18921974), Andr Breton (18961966), Tristan
of architecture to completely transform the world, his Tzara or Lebbeus Woods (1940 2012). To create his
Wandervogel romanticism, and his enthusiasm for text collages, Rosefeldt studies the speech rhythms of
the new materials of glass, steel and concrete shatter the various authors and in doing so reveals surprising
against this womans everyday existence, as she travels parallels between them; the same musical, synesthetic
from a dreary modernist housing development to a approach is also used to compose his images. He links
factory where she looks out of a huge glass window texts and images both metaphorically for example,
onto an alpine landscape of garbage. by establishing a connection between the mani
festos of the Futurists and stock exchange traders,
The first avant-garde was on the one hand closely on account of their shared love of speed and anti-
linked to the political utopias of modernism; on the thetically, when he puts Claes Oldenburgs Pop Art
other, it aimed to integrate art into the praxis of every manifesto into the mouth of a Southern American
day life and establish a new, revolutionary aesthet- housewife. He also invites viewers to experiment by
ics. An integral part of this was the use of the term creating their own combinations of images and sounds
avant-garde, originally a French military expression as they move through the Manifesto installation. With
denoting the advance guard that was sent ahead of this elaboration of the complex nature of manifestos,
the massed body of soldiers to enter enemy territory. Rosefeldt not only gives existing texts a contemporary
The new aesthetics was also characterized by its self- relevance by placing them in new contexts a method
staging in a variety of media, a particular rhetorical he has already employed in other works but for the
style, and the development of specific types of texts first time he assigns the leading role to the words
such as manifestos. Rosefeldt recalls these aspects themselves.
by, for example, having an announcer in a television
studio read excerpts from manifestos by Sturtevant As a combination of a functional text and an art text,13
(19242014) and Sol LeWitt (19282007) in the typ- the manifesto can be located somewhere between
ical style of a newsreader. All current art is fake, not literature and non-literature, poetics and poetry, text
because it is copy, appropriation, simulacra, or imita- and image, word and action.14 Tristan Tzaras humor-
tion, but because it lacks the crucial push of power, ous interventions upset linguistic conventions and
guts and passion,12 she declares, quoting Sturtevant hence subvert the logic of language comprehension.
in a sharp tone of voice. During the broadcast, Rose- The method he recommends for making a Dadaist
feldt also confronts the rhetoric of the well-groomed poem involves dismantling familiar structures and
newsreader with her alter ego a field reporter stand- developing new ones, as follows: Take a newspa-
ing in the rain, wearing an all-weather jacket. One is per. Take some scissors. Choose from this paper an
enclosed within the aseptic environment of the TV article of the length you want to make your poem.
studio; the other is apparently exposed to the storms Cut out the article. Next carefully cut out each of the
of the real world (dramatically simulated using spe- words that makes up this article and put them all in
cial effects, although the wind and rain machines are a bag. Shake gently. Next take out each cutting one
ultimately exposed). The field reporter and the studio after the other. Copy conscientiously in the order in
anchor address each other as Cate as they discuss the which they left the bag. The poem will resemble you.
fact that conceptual art is only good if the idea is good. And there you are an infinitely original author of
charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by
Manifestos are not simply a mode of providing infor- the vulgar herd.15 Similar approaches based on dcol-
mation or giving instructions for action, however. The lage were later developed by James Joyce (18821941)
affirmative nature of their language, their apodictic, and Max Frisch (19111991), among others; William
imperative style, their declamatory tone, the use of the S. Burroughs (19141997) and Brion Gysin (1916
future tense, hyperbole and superlatives but also the 1986) used what they termed the cut-up technique.
frequent inclusion of lists, memorable sequences and In the new millennium, this practice is also found in
polar thinking are all intended to serve an appellative the realm of music, where it is known as a mash-up.
function. The distinctive style of a manifesto aims to It invariably involves subverting expectations in order
create an emotional impact. Besides texts that are virtu- to move beyond normal practice in the contemporary
ally impossible to recite, Rosefeldt has discovered man- world.
ifestos with truly theatrical qualities. By taking them
out of their usual context, he also draws attention to The thirteen text collages that Julian Rosefeldt has
the literary, poetic beauty of numerous art manifestos compiled from a large number of art manifestos also
by the likes of Francis Picabia (18791953), Bruno subvert expectations, above all through their juxta
Taut, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes (18841974), position with his filmed images. Here, there are no
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Manifesto
angry young men mounting the barricades or declar- directly at the viewer and addresses him or her. Dif-
ing their demands to a secret assembly of potential ferent dialects and stylistic elements, such as choice of
conspirators. On the contrary: the majority of the pro- words and sentence structure, were used to create an
tagonists are women often not the youngest who individual manner of speaking for each of the protago-
are either formulating the text as an interior mono- nists. By turning towards the audience in this moment
logue intended only for themselves, or delivering it to of synchronicity, however, the characters temporarily
an audience that expects anything but a revolutionary put their roles aside, also in a linguistic sense: their
call to action. individual monologue becomes a monotonous vocali-
zation at a constant, predetermined pitch. As each film
Although the relationship between language and has its own set pitch, the combined sounds briefly pro-
image is not always asyntopical often a person is duce two successive chords16 diegetically created by
visible on screen as we hear their inner voice the text the orchestral harmonization of different manifestos.
and the filmed images do not appear to have the same
referential objects. The texts do not specify or explain The stylistic device of the aside does not have the same
the images, and this serves to emphasize the principle distancing effect (Verfremdungseffekt) in the Manifesto
of expenditure, the declamatory style and the expres- films as it normally does in the theatre, however. The
sionistic language that are inherent in manifestos. The characters do not use the aside to comment on what is
effect of this discrepancy between image and language happening in the film, nor do they give us information
is illustrated by Rosefeldt in a scene where a school- on the relationship between things or people within
teacher and her pupils quote passages from manifes- the communicative frame of the narrative, nor do they
tos by experimental filmmakers such as Dziga Vertov make critical or insulting observations. Nevertheless,
(18951954), Stan Brakhage (19332003), Werner the scenic unity is threatened and the fourth wall to
Herzog (b. 1942), Jim Jarmusch (b. 1953), Lars von the audience becomes porous the screen becomes a
Trier (b. 1956) and Thomas Vinterberg (b. 1969). membrane. Strangely enough, however, the characters
do not actually step outside their roles; instead, the
Despite the discrepancy between image and text, a viewer steps inside the film. The seductive power of
connection is made in the viewers perception of what the inflammatory texts and the sense of identification
is seen. Each of the films shows someone going about with the predominantly female protagonists have an
their everyday business, doing their job, engaging in affirmative effect that draws the viewer in.
their usual activities basically functioning in a nor-
mal situation. In the viewers mind, due to the intui- A further level is added to Manifesto by its leading
tive association between sound and images, the mono- actor, Cate Blanchett. Her extreme versatility and
logue becomes the audible testimony of the portrayed ability to authentically convey a wide range of speak-
characters inner struggle with their particular situa- ing styles and dialects enable the viewer to grasp both
tion, or of a conflict they find themselves in. Whether the variety and the unifying elements of the different
it is an inner voice or an audibly articulated one, what manifestos on an emotional level. Over and above this,
is being discussed are alternative possibilities for Blanchetts international celebrity guarantees that the
action, but these actions are never performed. Instead, project will receive media attention far beyond the art
a decision is made in preparation for an action. In this audience, and thus emphasizes the works manifesto-
way, Rosefeldt adds a level of tension that runs coun- like character.
ter to the mainly peaceful images, generating the kind
of subliminal rumblings which often lead up to the As the goals of the avant-garde artists to break with
implementation of an action and put viewers on alert. tradition and move away from the idea that naturalistic
representation was arts primary task, to unify the arts
Rosefeldt uses the appellative nature of the texts to and integrate art into life also involved communicat-
heighten this tension. The verbalizations and sub- ing sociopolitical ideals, their innovative approaches
sequent rationalizations that occur in a monologue required careful elaboration and explanation. They
generally create a certain detachment from a situ- wanted art to be not only the expression of, but also
ation, while an interior monologue is only aimed at the driving force behind, sociopolitical change. The
the person him- or herself. Here, however, although specific correlation between image and text is ulti-
the audience is not present at the fictional level of the mately what defines the manifesto as a medium of
respective characters, viewers feel that they are being reception control.
addressed and challenged due to the proclamatory
style of speaking. Rosefeldt draws attention to this Julian Rosefeldts complex film installation draws on
aspect by including at exactly the same point in Guy Debords concept of the society of the spec-
each film a moment when the main character looks tacle,17 where relationships and experiences are
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Manifesto
increasingly mediated by visual images. The crisis of 7 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Manifesto of the Com-
narratives18 at the end of the twentieth century also munist Party, in: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Selected Works,
trans. Samuel Moore in cooperation with Friedrich Engels, vol. 1,
contributed to this development. At the same time, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98137, here section 1,
however, the growing volume of available images and paragraph 18.
texts, along with the expansion of the pool of recipi- 8 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifest der K ommunistischen
Partei, printed in the office of the Bildungs-Gesellschaft
ents through print media, TV shows, web-based maga- fr Arbeiter [German Workers Educational Society] by
zines and social media platforms, has led to increasing J. E. Burghard, London, 1848.
attempts by commercial image makers, advertising 9 Cf. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital: 18481875, Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, London, 1975. According to Hobsbawm, the age
media, and political bodies as much as by artists to
of capital was followed by the age of empire: Eric Hobsbawm,
control reception. The desire to communicate grows, The Age of Empire: 18751914, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London,
while the individual message gradually loses its dis- 1987.
tinctive quality and impact due to the endless pos- 10 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Il Futurismo, in: Gazzetta
dellEmilia, 5 February 1909, title page.
sibilities for reflection and dissemination. Rosefeldt 11 Cf. Janet Lyon, Manifestoes: Provocations of the Modern, Cornell
makes manifest how all of this rekindles our desire University Press, Ithaca/New York, 1999, p. 13.
for manifestos, but also shows how curiously unreal it 12 Elaine Sturtevant, Shifting Mental Structures (1999), in:
Dressen, op. cit., pp. 135139, here p. 135.
would seem if we were now to proclaim universal ide- 13 Alfons Backes-Haase, Kunst und Wirklichkeit: Zur Typologie des
als in the form of a manifesto. DADA-Manifests, Athenums Monografien: Literaturwissen-
schaft, vol. 106, Anton Hain, Frankfurt/M., 1992, p. 130.
14 Hubert van den Berg, Das Manifest eine Gattung? in:
Hubert van den Berg and Ralf Grttemeier (eds.), Manifeste:
1 Elaine Sturtevant, Man Is Double Man Is Copy Man Is Clone, Intentionalitt, Avant-Garde Critical Studies, vol. 11, Rodopi,
in: Anne Dressen (ed.), Sturtevant. The Razzle Dazzle of Think- Amsterdam/Atlanta, 1998, pp. 193225, here pp. 194 f; trans-
ing, Ringier, Zurich, 2010, pp. 115117, here p. 115. lated from the German by Jacqueline Todd.
2 Based on Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto 1918, in: Robert 15 Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto on Feeble Love and Bitter
Motherwell (ed.), The Dada Painters and Poets. An Anthology, Love (1920), quoted in: Sarah Ganz Blythe and Edward D.
trans. Ralph Manheim, 2nd ed., G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, Powers (eds.), Looking at Dada, The Museum of Modern Art,
1981, pp. 7681, here p. 76. New York, 2006, p. 27.
3 Ibid., p. 77. Recited by the author on 23 July 1918 in Zurich at 16 A total of thirteen notes are heard: one chord consists of six
the Zunfthaus zur Meise, the Manifeste Dada 1918 was first notes; the other contains seven. As two notes are assigned to the
published in Dada, vol. 3, December 1918, pp. 13. split screen of the newsreader and the reporter, this particular
4 Cf. John Langshaw Austin, How to Do Things with Words, ed. film is present in both chords.
J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbis, Harvard University Press, 17 Cf. Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald
Cambridge, MA, 1962. Nicholson-Smith, Zone Books, New York, 1995, pp. 12ff. (ori
5 Wolfgang Stegmller, Hauptstrmungen der Gegenwartsphiloso- ginal French version 1967).
phie, vol. 2, 8th ed., Krner, Stuttgart, 1987, p. 64; translated 18 Cf. Jean-Franois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report
from the German by Jacqueline Todd. on Knowledge, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi,
6 La Notte, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni (Italy/France University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1984, p. xiii
1961, 122 min.). (original French version 1979).
87
Manifesto
Sparks Flying:
The Manifesto as Fireworks
Reinhard Spieler
In the beginning was the Word. The artists mani- a spectacular contrast with the glittering sparks. The
festo is the equivalent of the Christians profession of words And the light shineth in darkness appear in
faith. The manifesto often precedes the work; it may the same paragraph in the Gospel of John. The ten-
even precede the artistic act. It serves not only as an sion increases, we wait for the powerful, liberating or
artistic statement of self-assertion and intent but as a devastating explosion yet we wait in vain. The rocket
revolutionary call that extends far beyond art, whose is tethered; it cannot launch. At the end of the ten-
deliberately presumptuous aspiration is often nothing minute take the fuse, glowing feebly, falls spent and
less than to change the world. Standing tall on the charred into a little pile of ash, like a glowing excre-
roof of the world, yet once again, we hurl our defiance ment on the earth: and the darkness comprehended
at the stars!1 Such were the words of Filippo Tom- it not (John 1,5).
maso Marinetti as he proclaimed his universal aspira-
tion in the Manifesto of Futurism, published on 5 Feb- But in the voice over, Rosefeldt does not contextual-
ruary 1909 in the Italian daily newspaper Gazzetta ise the introductory images with the biblical quota-
dellEmilia and shortly afterwards, very prominently, tion but rather with a quotation from the first chap-
on the front page of the French newspaper Le Figaro. ter of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engelss Manifesto of
Manifestos are mental sparks and verbal sparkplugs the Communist Party: All that is solid melts into air.2
whose purpose is to cause an explosion. Viewers must decide for themselves whether the burn-
ing fuse, used here by Rosefeldt as a preamble, is to be
In his large-scale film installation, Manifesto, Julian interpreted religiously, politically or artistically.
Rosefeldt has forcefully translated this into images.
The installation itself is an artistic manifesto, juxta- The sequence with the fuse appears for a second time
posing images and text, giving equal priority to both. in the introductory scene of the collage made from
Thirteen manifesto collages trace a path through the manifestos by the Situationists, who worked at the
arts and their history. The work is a tour de force interface of art, politics and everyday reality. In this
through architecture, film, theatre, performance and scene, however, the dark background is replaced by
the visual arts, through the -isms of the avant-garde to a realistic setting. And here, at the end, the fuse does
the present day, ingeniously accompanied by images, not fall to earth as a damp squib but actually ignites a
which themselves in turn guide us through the history rocket a rocket that turns out to be a firework, with
of these media and their protagonists. countless different references to art and film history.
In the beginning was the Word. For Rosefeldt, the The countdown to the launch of a rocket ends with
beginning is the image. The introductory screen shows zero. Correspondingly, the firework was an artistic
a sparking fuse against a black background. Although manifesto for the ZERO group and a key element of
a flame actually only sets off a firework at the end of their happening-like ZERO festivity on 5 July 1961
a fuse, Rosefeldt has staged the actual sparks of the in Dusseldorfs historic centre. The rocket represents
burning cord as a firework. In a single long take, we zero point, a beginning and a new departure and thus
see a comet-like fiery tail in extreme slow motion fundamentally any artistic manifesto. Here Rosefeldt
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Manifesto
refers even more specifically to cinematic examples, and, once again, Michelangelo Antonioni. The protag-
particularly to Michelangelo Antonionis La Notte, onists moped journey from home to work becomes
which, interestingly, was released the same year as the a trip through the architectural history of twentieth-
ZERO festivity. In this film, a very beautiful young century Berlin. At the end, the grandiose architectural
Monica Vitti as the somewhat disorientated Valentina utopias end up, figuratively speaking, as waste in the
Gherardini watches as three young men set off a rocket refuse sorting plant.
clearly an erotically charged scene. Rosefeldts enact-
ment is an inverted mirror image of Antonionis film. Rosefeldt relocates the vision of the Futurists, who
He transforms his lead actor, Cate Blanchett every bit applauded noise, speed and modern technology, to
as impressive as the radiant Monica Vitti into a com- the eerie silence of an online trading floor. Speed and
pletely bedraggled tramp; in Rosefeldts version, the technology disappear behind sterile screens; the world
three young men become three old women who light is ruled by invisible mainframe computers engaged in
the rocket and celebrate like young boys. The setting real-time trading. The automated world events do not
is very similar to that in Antonionis film but, while the allow for any independent acts; people are essentially
Italian directors work is rooted in post-war malaise, superfluous and perform only ritualised gestures of
Rosefeldt chooses as his showcase the post-indus- excited nervousness.
trial backdrop of a former fertilizer plant in Rders-
dorf near Berlin. The excerpts from the manifestos, Rosefeldt embeds the utopias of the Russian Construc-
which span the twentieth century from Aleksandr tivists and Suprematists in the futuristic ambience of a
Rodchenko (1919) through the John Reed Club of New Silicon Valley setting: a technology lab that looks as if
York (1932), Constant Nieuwenhuys (1948) and Lucio it comes from another planet, in which capsules glide
Fontana (1946) to Guy Debord (1960), formulate a up and down completely automatically and people
harsh criticism of capitalism. Rosefeldts artist-tramp in white protective suits walk around. In this case,
appears as a victim of circumstances, and the virile the manifesto texts can be heard in an Orwellian Big
firework no longer conveys a belief in the future and Brother-like voice over as an omnipresent computer
an affinity with technology but instead has become the voice, which sounds throughout the entire building.
childlike pastime of bored old women.
A strange black object hovers in the innermost tech-
The motif of the burning fuse appears for a third nology sanctum, in the heart of the laboratory temple.
time in the scene dealing with the manifestos of Stri- It seems as if Kazimir Malevichs Black Square (1915)
dentism and Creationism. Here we see a close-up of has made its way from the corner of the room, where
the lighting and burning of a cigarette. Just as in the it once claimed for itself the rank of icon, into the
introductory scene, in which the sparkling firework is middle of the room and has transformed into the
categorically not set off, Rosefeldt uses this image as mysterious three-dimensional (foreign) body familiar
a metaphor for burning down and burning out. We to us from Stanley Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey
see a backstage setting featuring rock musicians. The (1968). Kubricks film opens with a scene depicting
protagonist is a tattooed and drunken Cate Blanchett, apes which suddenly instigate a war and discover a
who reminds one of Any Winehouse in looks, and club as a lethal weapon. In one of the most legendary
Kate Moss in speech. Wolfgang Tillmans and Nan cuts in cinema history, the club that is thrown up into
Goldin provide the inspiration here, as do Otto Dix, the air is transformed into a spaceship a leap of a
George Grosz and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner; Jeff Wall hundred thousand years in one cut. Rosefeldt alludes
also gets a nod in the closing shot with his Thinker to this scene in the poster of a Neanderthal (adopting
(1986), which in turn references Auguste Rodin. the pose of Rodins Thinker, from 1902) stuck to an
office door. The scene is perfectly choreographed. Our
The scene for the architecture manifestos is also gaze is drawn to an emergency exit sign opposite the
located in a setting characterised by a lack of pros- poster, suggesting a presumed exit from the story. The
pects, hopelessness and sadness. Rosefeldt under- emergency exit on the pictogram is a white rectan-
mines texts by Antonio SantElia (1914), Bruno Taut gle coincidence, art historian neurosis or directors
(1920/21), Coop Himmelb(l)au (1980) and Robert device? At any rate, it is difficult, not only in the case
Venturi (1993) all of which can be associated with the of the hovering black object but also in the case of
utopian potential of architecture with the reality of a the white rectangle on the emergency exit sign, not to
depressingly hopeless social environment. We catch a think of Malevichs Black Square and the black mono-
glimpse of the joyless daily routine of a rubbish plant liths from Kubricks Space Odyssey.
worker and single mother in a piece resonating with
references to cinematic works by Claude C habrol, Aki Under Rosefeldts direction, a spiral staircase in the
Kaurismki, the Italian Neorealist Pier Paolo Pasolini future laboratory is transformed into a space galaxy,
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Manifesto
which appears again as a company logo on the protec- featuring Cate Blanchett. The tracking shot initially
tive suits worn by the laboratory staff a tongue-in- travels through the studio sky of a spotlit television
cheek reframing of the Black Square into an esoteric news studio. Rather than presenting the light itself,
spiral nebula logo in a colour and design typical of the emphasis is on the machinery that is generating
Olafur Eliasson. the light. Accordingly, Rosefeldt does not focus on
the image that the television audience gets to see but
For his collage based on Andr Bretons Manifesto of rather on the technical means of creating the cinematic
Surrealism (1924), which includes extracts from Lucio illusion. We see the newsreader a few minutes before
Fontanas White Manifesto (1946), Rosefeldt has cho- she appears on the programme, the cameras that are
sen a mannequin workshop as the setting. The manne- trained on her, and the assistants who make the last-
quin was a key metaphor for the Surrealists, and was minute hand signals. It is only when the programme
a motif they increasingly called upon. In the legend- begins that the camera zooms in, until the image we,
ary Exposition internationale du Surralisme of 1938, as the viewers of the installation, see is identical to
the wonderful exhibition as Gesamtkunstwerk choreo- what is usually seen by a television audience. The
graphed and staged by Marcel Duchamp, Salvador duplication of figures is now presented as a link to a
Dal and others, a row of specially decorated and reporter who is standing outdoors in the pouring rain,
dressed shop window mannequins constituted the cen- reporting on location from under an umbrella. At the
tral motif. In Rosefeldts work, our gaze slides across a end, we see that the outdoor shoot was just as much
hand puppet workshop via a gallery of ancestral por- a construction of illusion as the studio footage was:
traits of potentates, statesmen and other personalities the camera reveals the rain generator and the wind
from world history Fidel Castro, Vladimir I. Lenin, machine, and the equipment used to generate the illu-
Mao Zedong, Yassar Arafat, Mahatma Gandhi, sion is switched off thus confirming the newsreaders
Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Pope John top story at the start of the programme: All current
Paul II, Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein and Marlene art is fake []. All of man is fake. All of man is false.4
Dietrich. In between, we encounter various sinister
figures that make the entire setting look like a cham- The combination of text and image do not always cor-
ber of horrors from history. It is a journey through respond to what we might initially associate with the
the world of dreams: Karl Marx, to whom Rosefeldt manifesto texts. Claes Oldenburgs Pop Art manifesto
tellingly grants the first word in Manifesto, hangs side is set not against the backdrop of 1970s Pop design,
by side with Sigmund Freud; Yuri Gagarin greets us for example, but in a claustrophobic, petit bourgeois
as the first man in space, and John Lennon allows us family household in the USA in precisely the type of
to dream of better times (Imagine...), while he waits environment that the Pop movement attacked, redo-
at Yoko Onos side beside Benito Mussolini and Adolf lent with the smugness the movement sought to van-
Hitler. quish with bright colours and indulgent consumption.
The tracking shot ends with Cate Blanchett as a pup- A similar setting is staged for the Dadaist manifesto.
peteer shaping her own alter ego. Gradually she trans- Even the compilation of texts is consistent with the
forms the puppet in her hands from a male-looking movement, forming, in best Kurt Schwitters style,
bald head into an image of herself. In this way, the role a large collage and a super Dada manifesto. After,
of the puppeteer also hints at the manifold metamor- and even during, the First World War, Dada turned
phosis of Blanchett in Manifesto. The wig is secured to away from all meaningfulness and instead asserted
her head with needles, bearing an eerie resemblance absurdity, the absence of all logic and consistency
to a voodoo doll. The puppeteer brings her own alter in world affairs: Dada; abolition of memory: Dada;
ego to life, and starts up a dialogue. I believe in the abolition of archaeology: Dada; abolition of prophets:
future resolution of these two states, dream and real- Dada; abolition of the future.5 Here, Rosefeldt has
ity into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality,3 she chosen a situation in which each deviation from stand-
says, quoting Andr Breton. The direct encounter and ard behaviour is associated with the greatest possible
the dialogue between face and mask (here the puppet) breach of taboo, and which is charged with the greatest
immediately addresses one of the icons of Surrealism: possible gravity and seriousness imaginable: a funeral.
Man Rays famous photo of Kiki with the mask (Noire The staging of the Dadaist manifesto as a graveside
et blanche, 1926). oration gives us an idea of what a breach of taboo the
Dadaist movement represented in its time.
We see the duplication of the figures once again in
the manifesto collage made from Minimal and Con- Julian Rosefeldts medium is film, the moving image.
cept Art texts written by Sol LeWitt (1967) and Stur- It is striking that he constantly slows down or even
tevant (1999), but in this case in two lively versions completely stops the movement of images. He achieves
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Manifesto
this with long takes and very slow tracking shots, dramatic arts. The film scenes are transformed unex-
which seem almost stationary, with the result that pectedly into a portrait gallery now we are looking
the film solidifies into a static image such as at the at an ancestral gallery of artist manifestos. Thirteen
beginning of the scene with a tangle of quotes from voices are superimposed one on top of the other, com-
the Blaue Reiter, Vorticist and Abstract Expression- bining to form a symphonic tone, in which the individ-
ist manifestos. The tree-framed view of the lake looks ual texts can no longer be heard. Instead, the resulting
like a Caspar David Friedrich painting and only after tone conveys the message sparks flying from word
a very long take does the camera zoom out, gradu- to sound. It is the sound of pathos and rebellion, of
ally moving the viewer into the contemporary envi- passion and a new dawn, the canon of manifestos, the
ronment of a villa. In other scenes, Rosefeldt uses profession of faith of Modernism.
extreme slow motion to slow down the plot and shift
the focus from the action to the image. This happens
most noticeably in the scene of the film manifesto, ini- 1 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, The Manifesto of Futurism, in:
tially set in a school classroom and then moved out- idem, Critical Writings, edited by Gnter Berghaus, trans. Doug
Thompson, Farrar/Straus/Giroux, New York, 2006, pp. 1116,
side to the schoolyard. By using slow motion Rose- here p. 16 (original Italian version 1909).
feldt alludes to various styles of direction such as 2 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist
in the succinct portrayal of a classroom, when Cate Party, in: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Selected Works, trans.
Samuel Moore in cooperation with Frederick Engels, vol. 1,
Blanchett, as the teacher, drums formulas from Lars Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98137, here section 1,
von Triers Dogma 95 into the children, or in a pathos- paragraph 18 (original German version 1848).
laden, soaring dove, as seen in the grandiose shooting 3 Based on Andr Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism, in: Charles
Harrison and Paul Wood (eds.), Art in Theory, 19001990: An
choreography of John Woos films.
Anthology of Changing Ideas, trans. Richard Seaver and Helen R.
Lane, Blackwell, Cambridge, pp. 433439, here p. 436 (original
Twelve of the thirteen manifesto collages, each of French version 1924).
which lasts ten and a half minutes, solidify synchro- 4 Elaine Sturtevant, Shifting Mental Structures (1999), in:
Anne Dressen (ed.), Sturtevant. The Razzle Dazzle of Thinking,
nously at one point into an almost static image. As Ringier, Zurich, 2010, pp. 135139, here p. 135.
the main protagonist in every scene, on one occasion 5 Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto 1918, in: Robert Motherwell
Cate Blanchett steps out of character, turning to face and Jean Arp (eds.), The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology,
transl. Ralph Manheim, Harvard University Press, Harvard,
the viewer with an unswerving gaze, and reciting part 1981, pp. 7682, here p. 81. Recited by the author on 23 July
of the manifesto texts in a ritualistic, almost prayer- 1918 in Zurich at the Zunfthaus zur Meise, the Manifeste
like, sing-song voice. Her outstanding acting blends Dada 1918 was first published in Dada, vol. 3, December
text and image and itself becomes a manifesto of the 1918, pp. 13.
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Manifesto
Burcu Dogramaci
Dada was a movement shaped by transformation and contemporary manifestos are often time- and
processes; whether it was at the Cabaret Voltaire in location-dependent and hence more ephemeral in
Zurich or the Thtre Michel in Paris prior to every nature; sometimes these are only handed down in the
proclamation or reading, the participants donned form of descriptive accounts, reviews, and very occa-
costumes ranging from the fanciful to the downright sionally in visual materials such as drawings, photo-
bizarre. These costumed performances were not only graphs or film footage. One such example is a pen-
conceived as a gesture of provocation, but they also and-ink drawing by Umberto Boccioni of a Futurist
reflected the Dadaists fundamental approach to com- Evening in Milan in 1911.3 It depicts Boccioni
municating the innovative, future-oriented content himself alongside Francesco Balilla Pratella, Filippo
of their manifestos. Transforming into a different, Tommaso Marinetti, Carlo Carr and Luigi Russolo;
masked self was an essential means of creating the they are standing on the stage and gesticulating
body that could then be used to articulate their impas- wildly, surrounded by their artworks and accompa-
sioned public declarations. nied by an orchestra. This illustration, however, can
only convey a general impression of the situation on
The communicative nature of the art manifesto, stage and says little about the actual content of the
which is both a declaration and an artistic action, performance or the actions that took place. For this
demands and cultivates particular types of staging reason, the text itself remains the main point of ref-
that involve language, illustration or design, and erence for our current perspective on historical and
articulation through performative practice. From contemporary art manifestos.
the outset, manifestos are texts that are intended to
be performative.1 Notable texts that were set down Masking and Performativity
in the form of a manifesto, such as Tristan Tzaras A manifesto a term derived from the Latin mani-
Manifeste Dada 1918, or the leaflet Manifestation from festus (clear, evident)4 can be disseminated in
3 January 1967, which was written by Daniel Buren various ways: over the years, both spoken and written
and three other artists, were meant to be presented manifestos which may be published in different
as spoken-word and performance-based actions countries and in a number of languages have been
prior to being distributed in a written form, usually distributed via newspapers, postcards, books, leaflets,
at a later date. However, in some instances there are films and videos. In the majority of cases, the artistic
asymmetries between text and recorded action. This declarations are directed at a public audience, or at
traces back to the fact that little evidence remains least have an implicit addressee. They have a cona-
of the actual performance of manifestos. In most tive or appellative function, are meant to be read or
cases, the written manifesto is not only documented heard, and place a metaphorical exclamation mark
in the original sources but is also still in circula- with their statements. Artists manifestos are generally
tion in numerous anthologies of manifestos, which intended to have a socially formative or transforma-
in turn form the basis of in-depth studies.2 By con- tive effect that goes beyond the sphere of art: Histori-
trast, the performative practices of twentieth-century cally speaking, the manifesto is a declamatory form: it
92
Manifesto
speaks loudly and urgently to the present day. It may Janco has made a number of masks for the new soiree,
warn of impending crises or propose an alternative and they are more than just clever. They are reminis-
vision of the future.5 In this respect, modern, post cent of the Japanese or ancient Greek theater, yet they
modern and contemporary manifestos are demon- are wholly modern. [] We were all there when Janco
strative articulations that assert themselves as a pars arrived with his masks, and everyone immediately put
pro toto. For the performance of Erklrung vor dem one on. Then something strange happened. Not only
Fernseher (1960) by the artists group SPUR, which did the mask immediately call for a costume; it also
put forward the notion of an art freed from social demanded a quite definite, passionate gesture, border-
norms, the artist Helmut Sturm adopted the dema- ing on madness. Although we could not have imagined
gogic linguistic style of National Socialist politicians.6 it five minutes earlier, we were walking around with
This deliberately provocative speech act was among the most bizarre movements, festooned and draped
other things intended to highlight ideological and per- with impossible objects, each one of us trying to outdo
sonnel continuities between the Nazi regime and the the other in inventiveness. The motive power of these
young Federal Republic of Germany. masks was irresistibly conveyed to us.11
The vociferous public presentation of a manifesto The game of masks thus becomes a borderline experi-
often takes place as part of a live event or action within ence for both the actors and the audience. The dis-
a set spatial and temporal framework. Leaflets contain- guising costume is the creative stimulus and driving
ing Futurist manifestos were reportedly dropped from force behind the actions performed. Masking and
the top of a clock tower in Venice on 27 April 1910, defamiliarizing the speakers faces allows them to
and also handed out from a car on Berlins Potsdamer assume different identities, while the spoken words
Platz in 1913.7 Key figures of the Fluxus and Happen are in turn detached from the self of the artist and
ings movements, such as Allan Kaprow and Henry can thereby become a more general but also a more
Flynt, declaimed their manifesto-like texts in other fundamental articulation.
datable lecture performances. At a Fluxus concert in
Wuppertal on 9 June 1962, Arthus C. Caspari read a Becoming the Manifesto
manifesto by George Maciunas, while two transpar- Julian Rosefeldts Manifesto is both a filmic re-enact-
encies were projected onto a wall. A few months ear- ment of manifestos that remains independent of their
lier, in February 1962, Maciunas himself had thrown original authors, and a new kind of super-manifesto
offset-printed copies of a manifesto into the crowd at that extracts, collages and recontextualizes existing
the Festum Fluxorum in Dsseldorf.8 These examples material. While the idea of restaging manifestos is in
illustrate the connection between written text, spoken itself not unusual, Rosefeldts artistic exploration of
word and action, thus drawing attention to the theat- the history of manifestos is entirely different from a
rical or performative aspect of manifestos. A blurring literal revival. He has compiled and interwoven a
of text and performative action is above all seen in large number of excerpts from manifestos from the
the manifestos of Happening and Fluxus artists. Wolf nineteenth to the twenty-first century, ranging from
Vostells Manifest 1963,Wuppertal was read in the con- the 1848 Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei [The
text of the Happening NEUN NEIN DECOLLAGEN Manifesto of the Communist Party] by Karl Marx
on 14 September 1963, and a facsimile copy of the and F riedrich Engels to manifestos of Expression-
text was subsequently published as an autonomous ism, Futurism, Surrealism, Minimalism and Pop Art
manifesto in 1970.9 through to texts from the recent past. Manifestos from
the realms of visual art, architecture, dance, and film
The performative articulation of manifestos and their are equally represented. Each film in Manifesto is set
transformation into action requires a particular s patial in a different location that creates the appropriate
environment, which can be an art venue (gallery, framework for the narrative scene, such as at a lake-
museum), a stage (theatre, opera), or other public side party, in a stock-market trading room or a wood-
place (street, square); masking and costume design land cemetery. Long takes are used for the opening
can also be used to transform the actors appearances. sequences and provide surprising introductions to the
In this context, masking refers not only to the thea- scenes, whereby the camera angle, framing and per-
tre masks that give the face a single, fixed expression, spective are matched to the particular setting. In one
but also to the transformation of the face with the aid film, for example, the camera lingers on a stunning
of make-up.10 The Dadaist Hugo Balls description of landscape view before a long tracking shot takes us
a performance at the Cabaret Voltaire in May 1916 across a terrace and into a villa furnished with design
shows how the use of masks could take on a life of its objects and works of art, where a party is being held.
own, providing inspiration for expressive and highly In another film we are given a birds-eye view of an
imaginative performances: open-plan office where stock-market traders desks are
93
Manifesto
arranged in tight rows. The brokers identity cannot be creative imagination constitute the work of art. The
established from this height; they have assimilated and presenter uses a firm tone and harsh diction to sell
become hard-working parts of a greater whole. At first, this news to her imaginary audience: All current art
the manifestos are read in voice over; only later does is fake, not because it is copy, appropriation, simula-
the camera shift to the leading actor, Cate Blanchett, cra or imitation, but because it lacks the crucial push
who appears as thirteen surprisingly different perso- of power, guts and passion.12 Radical statements of
nas with distinctive outfits, hairstyles and make-up. artistic intent thus metamorphose into commonplace
TV news items. Presented in their new guise, the
When Blanchett assumes thirteen different identities newsreaders statements can also be understood as
to read and enact texts that are in turn compiled from a contemporary critique of media, in the sense that
a range of canonized works, she never plays the role of all news is fake. The inherent social criticism in the
Kurt Schwitters, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti or Lucio majority of manifestos becomes visible once more and
Fontana. The gap in time between the creation of the can be considered in a new light.
manifestos and Rosefeldts filmic adaptation is accom-
panied by a transformation of the performative enact- Manifesto is an attempt to breathe new life into docu-
ment. The manifestos issued by artists such as Yvonne ments of art at a point of departure once provoca-
Rainer, Barnett Newman or Claes Oldenburg were tive texts that have since led a rather sad existence,
written in response to their situation in the United trapped inside books and anthologies. Art manifestos
States during the 1960s and reflect the artistic, social only reveal their real power when they are read aloud,
and political contexts of that time. This situation can- addressed, declaimed and performed by active partici-
not be reactivated or simulated or at least there is pants in a setting that has been carefully designed for
not much to be gained by doing this for contemporary this purpose. Released from the receptacle in which
recipients and their understanding of manifestos as a they have been stored the cultural archive of a book
political art form. Julian Rosefeldts concept for Mani- they return to being spoken words and performa-
festo therefore eschews any direct connection with the tive actions. The distancing effect (Verfremdungseffekt)
historical figures of the manifesto writers and their between the content of the text and its enactment
social, political or historical contexts. thereby reflects the basic structure of many performed
manifestos, which are less concerned with achieving a
To transport the manifestos into the present day, coincidence of word and action than with introducing
Rosefeldt has defined a typology of nameless yet uni- discontinuities, dissonances and irritations into their
versally comprehensible everyday figures in the early presentation perhaps best exemplified by the perfor-
twenty-first century, including the homeless man, mances of the Dada and Fluxus artists.
the teacher, the funeral speaker, the newsreader, the
broker, the (US-American) mother and the choreog- Rosefeldts Manifesto also has different modes of pres-
rapher. With the aid of professional hair styling, make- entation: it can be shown as a thirteen-channel instal-
up and costume design (by Massimo Gattabrusi, lation or as a single-channel, linear film piece. While
Morag Ross and Bina Daigeler respectively), Cate the latter resembles an anthology film, the simultane-
Blanchett demonstrates her exceptional acting skills ous projection of the twelve manifesto compilations
as she transforms herself into each of these characters. the thirteenth film is projected as an introduction on
In the various guises of the imaginary figures each a screen set apart from the others creates a sound
of whom has their own distinctive physical appear- collage where individual voices and texts can only
ance, behavioural traits and manner of speaking she be made out if you are standing close to one of the
appropriates the selected excerpts and utters state- screens. But there are is also a moment of overlap
ments which at the time of writing were often incred- when Blanchett speaks parts of the texts at a prede-
ibly provocative, representing a break with tradition termined pitch, so that at a specific point in time, two
and marking a new departure. In Rosefeldts work, successive chords created from the combined voices
the dynamism and technological advances reflected in produce a distinctive harmony that fills the space. The
texts by the Futurists from the early twentieth century films present a performative enactment of the s poken
are juxtaposed with the speed of stock price fluctua- words by the chameleon-like Cate Blanchett. She
tion in todays world, while the devoutly religious adopts a different persona in each of her thirteen roles
mother from the American South embodies the very in the twelve films, whereby hair, make-up, costuming,
conservative values that Pop artist Claes Oldenburg acting and setting help to create a range of characters
so strongly opposed fifty years ago. Blanchett voices that are completely independent of one another. At
Conceptual and Minimal Art manifestos in the role the same time, it is not unimportant that all of the
of an attractive news anchor, denouncing the com- roles are embodied by a single person, who in this way
modification of art and asserting that the idea and the demonstrates her incredible versatility following in
94
Manifesto
the tradition of the eight male and female roles played 5 Duncan Forbes and Florian Ebner, Manifeste! Eine andere
Geschichte der Fotografie, in: Manifeste! Eine andere Geschichte
by Alec Guinness in the film Kind Hearts and Coronets der Fotografie, exh. cat. Museum Folkwang, Essen, Foto
(1949). Nevertheless, Blanchett shines through every museum Winterthur, Steidl, Gttingen, 2014, pp. 6971, here
role, with the result that her combined performances p. 69; translated from the German by Jacqueline Todd.
6 Cf. Roberto Ohrt, Vorwort, in: Ein kultureller Putsch. Manifeste,
also enable a comparative reflection on the manifesto Pamphlete und Provokationen der Gruppe SPUR, Edition Nautilus,
as an art form. In all the texts selected by Rosefeldt, Hamburg, 1991, pp. 611, here p. 10.
single-mindedness, a sense of urgency and a desire to 7 Cf. Apollonio, op. cit., p. 18. Leaflets have always been an
important medium for the distribution of manifestos. In Janu-
change the world are clearly evident; manifestos dont
ary 1961, for example, the Situationist Internationals leaflet
ask, they demand. In Manifesto, the actors chang- Avantgarde ist unerwnscht! was distributed by the artists group
ing roles are a dramaturgical means of giving these SPUR in Munich. Cf. Richard Hrner, Die Gruppe SPUR.
demands a transcendent significance, whereby the Politische Manifeste einer Knstlergruppe, SLC Scriptline Publish-
ers, Wrth am Rhein, 2014, p. 66.
performative act does not refer to a meaning that is 8 See: Concept. Action. Language. Pop art, Fluxus, Concept art,
already inherent within the texts, but instead generates Nouveau Ralisme and Arte povera. From the Collections Hahn and
meaning through action.13 The characters in Manifesto Ludwig, exh. cat. Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung L udwig
Wien, Vienna, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Knig,
do not simply voice and embody the manifesto they Cologne, 2006, p. 182; Sarah Maske, Fluxus und die Manifeste
become the manifesto. von George Maciunas. Theoretische Basis, politische Stellung-
nahme oder Werbemittel?, in: Fluxus at 50, exh. cat. Museum
Wiesbaden, Kerber, Bielefeld/Berlin, 2012, pp. 172185, here
pp. 173, 178.
1 Wolfgang Asholt and Walter Fhnders, Einleitung, in: eidem 9 Wolf Vostell, Happening & Leben, Luchterhand, Neuwied, 1970,
(eds.), Manifeste und Proklamationen der europischen Avantgarde pp. 269272. See also Hans-Edwin Friedrich, lesen sie dieses
(19091938), Metzler, Stuttgart/Weimar, 1995, pp. xvxxx, manifest und dcollagieren sie es. Wolf Vostells Manifeste,
here p. xxv; translated from the German by Jacqueline Todd. in: Klaus Gereon Beuckers, Hans-Edwin Friedrich, and Sven
2 Besides the many collections of manifestos of individual move- Hanauschek (eds.), Wolf Vostell. D-coll/age als Manifest Mani-
ments such as Dada, Futurism or Surrealism, there are a num- fest als D-coll/age. Manifeste, Aktionsvortrge, Essays, Edition
ber of notable general anthologies of manifestos from the twen- Text + Kritik, Munich, 2014, pp. 213220, here pp. 213216.
tieth and twenty-first centuries, including Charles Harrison 10 Hans Belting has conducted an in-depth study of the etymo-
and Paul Wood (eds.), Art in Theory 19002000: An Anthology logical relationship and semantic links between the face and the
of Changing Ideas, 2nd ed., Blackwell, Malden, MA and Oxford, mask. Hans Belting, Faces. Eine Geschichte des Gesichts, C. H.
2002; Wetterleuchten! Knstler-Manifeste des 20. Jahrhunderts, Beck, Munich, 2013, here above all pp. 2544.
Edition Nautilus, Hamburg, 2000; Alex Danchev, 100 Artists 11 Hugo Ball, Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, trans. Ann Raimes,
Manifestos. From the Futurists to the Stuckists, P
enguin Books, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA,
London, 2011. 1996, p. 64.
3 Illustrated in: Umbro Apollonio, Der Futurismus. Manifeste und 12 Elaine Sturtevant, Shifting Mental Structures (1999), in:
Dokumente einer knstlerischen Revolution 19091918, DuMont, Anne Dressen (ed.), Sturtevant. The Razzle Dazzle of Thinking,
Cologne, 1972, p. 9. Ringier, Zurich, 2010, pp. 135139, here p. 135.
4 On the etymology of the term manifesto, its cross-linguistic 13 This draws upon concepts of performativity developed by Judith
meaning and various usages, see Hubert van den Berg and Ralf Butler in the late 1980s and later elaborated by Erika Fischer-
Grttemeier, Interpretation, Funktionalitt und Strategie. Ver- Lichte in her book The Transformative Power of Performance:
such einer intentionalen Bestimmung des Manifests, in: eidem A New Aesthetics: Bodily, performative acts do not express a
(eds.), Manifeste: Intentionalitt, Rodopi, Amsterdam/Atlanta, pre-existing identity but engender identity through these very
1998, pp. 738, here p. 19ff. acts. Erika Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power of Per-
formance: A New Aesthetics, trans. Saskya Iris Jain, Routledge,
Abingdon, 2008, p. 27.
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Manifesto
interview
with julian rosefeldt
Sarah Tutton and Justin Paton
Manifesto is a word with a lot of historical The texts you have selected come largely from the
weight.What does it mean to you? first half of the last century.Why?
I have used the title Manifesto as a clear statement that Yes, most of the manifestos that I have included in
the focus in this work is above all on texts, whether Manifesto are from the European avant-garde in the
by visual artists, filmmakers, writers, performers or early twentieth century, with others from the neo-
architects and on the poetry of these texts. Manifesto avant-garde in the 1960s. The art scene at the begin-
is an homage to the beauty of artists manifestos a ning of the last century was still very small and those
manifesto of manifestos. writers of art manifestos were again a minority within
this tiny art scene. To be heard, artists needed to yell.
Were manifestos important to you as a young The art scene today is a global network and business
artist? with diverse means of expression. The manifesto as a
No, I must admit that they were not important to me in medium of artistic articulation has become less rele
the past. I simply didnt know them at the time. Today vant in a globalized art world. You could say that the
I think of the manifesto as a rite of passage, not only interview, the podium discussion, the talk show, the
for young artists but also for young people in general. dialectically led discourse have replaced the former
As we move beyond adolescence, we leave home and loud bellowing sole claim of the manifesto. It would
scream out our newly discovered fury at the world. sound unnecessarily exaggerated and almost roman-
A manifesto often represents the voice of a young tic, even a bit ridiculous, to shout Down with or
generation, confronted with a world they dont agree something similar today. Still, there are a few very
with and they want to go against. You can either play interesting contemporary manifestos as, for instance,
in a punk band, start yelling at your parents or your the Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics (2013) by
teachers or you can write or make art. Art histor Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams or the feminist Cyborg
ians tend to regard everything created and written by Manifesto (1991) by Donna Haraway but they read
artists with reverence and respect, as if, from day one, more like socio-economical and -political analysis. Yet
the artists themselves intended their work to become when you read a manifesto from the 1920s or even the
part of art history. But we shouldnt forget that these 1960s, you still hear that original voice, that fervent
texts were usually written by very young men who had desire to propel an idea into the world.
barely left home when they reached for the pen. Thus
their manifestos are not only texts which are intended Was there a particular text that sparked your
to turn art and eventually the whole world upside interest?
down and revolutionise it; at the same time they are My interest in the artists manifesto began whilst I was
testimonials about the search for identity, shouted out working on Deep Gold in 2013. Deep Gold is an hom-
into the world with great insecurity. So I read the art- age to Luis Buuels film LAge dOr about two young
ists manifesto firstly as an expression of defiant youth, lovers and the obstacles that prevent them from con-
then as literature, as poetry so to say, Sturm und summating their relationship. For Buuel the lovers
Drang remastered. predicament symbolizes the hypocrisy of bourgeois
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Manifesto
society, Catholicism and traditional family mores. of the many Dada or Fluxus artists could be combined
During my research I was reading a lot about gender into a kind of condensation, a kind of Super-Dada- or
and feminist theory, and eventually about manifes- Super-Fluxus-Manifesto. Through cuts and the com-
tos by feminist artists. I came across two texts by the bination of original texts from numerous manifestos,
Futurist poet and choreographer Valentine de Saint- twelve manifesto collages finally emerged. And these
Point. She lived an interesting life; she started out as a read harmoniously within each collage to a degree that
strong Futurist, later sympathised with fascism as did the borderlines between the text fragments could no
many of her Italian artist friends, and died in Egypt longer be identified. I have constructed Manifesto as a
as a Muslim. She wrote two manifestos, one called series of episodes that can be seen separately but that
Futurist Manifesto of Lust (1913) and the other Mani- can also be seen together in their entirety, as a choir of
festo of the Futurist Woman (1912). They are both pub- different voices. In this sense Manifesto became a new
lished in a book called 100 Artists Manifestos [2011, text itself again: a manifesto of manifestos.
edited by Alex Danchev] which became an important
source for Manifesto. You have an extraordinary collaborator in all this,
When I was young I had studied probably like every- the actor Cate Blanchett. She inhabits thirteen
body interested in art Dada, Fluxus, the Surrealists different roles set against twelve different scenar-
and the Futurists, but only superficially. Now, during ios. How did these characters and their dialogue
my research for Manifesto, when I read any manifesto evolve?
I could find including those related to theatre, dance, The main idea for Manifesto was not to illustrate the
film and architecture, it was exciting to discover that particular manifesto texts, but rather to allow Cate
the same ideas appear again and again. And these to embody the manifestos. Until the last third of the
common ideas all came along with so much energy twentieth century there were only a few manifes-
that very young, wild energy. The writing was beauti- tos written by women artists. Most were written by
ful, and I could hear the words as if they were spoken. men and they are just bursting with testosterone. So
I realised that they werent just historical art docu- I thought it was thrilling to let them be spoken today
ments, but the most lively, performable text material. by a woman.
They reminded me rather of a piece of theatre, of a The process of scripting Manifesto was very organic.
Sarah Kane or Frank Wedekind text or something I started to play with the texts and to edit, combine
comparable. And so I began to imagine these mani and rearrange them into new texts that could be spo-
festos in performed scenes. ken and performed. I like to imagine these texts as the
words of a bunch of friends sitting around a table in a
According to what criteria did you seek out and bar talking and arguing. They are complementing each
put together the twelve manifesto collages you other in a playful way. One may say Down with this
created? or that and the other replies, Yes, to hell with
Before I started writing the script and collaging the I would take a sentence by one artist and interrupt it
manifestos, the development of the work involved a with the words of another one. Sometimes they would
lot of textual research and analysis. With the exception fit perfectly. The words took on a new energy when
of a fragment quoted from Karl Marx and Friedrich combined, and if you start to read the text like that it
Engelss Manifesto of the Communist Party of 1848, All also becomes more vivid and more speakable.
that is solid melts into air, my selection begins at the While in one way the process of collaging them
start of the twentieth century with the legendary 1909 together was maybe not very respectful to the original
The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism by Filippo texts, in another I liked the way that it referenced this
Tommaso Marinetti and ends shortly after the turn of idea of a collection of voices, a conversation. Many
the century. I included Karl Marx, because for me his of the early manifestos, of the Futurists and the Sur-
is the mother of all manifestos besides the Ten Com- realists, were written by groups of artists. There were
mandments and the Lutheran Thesis. The most cur- already multiple voices in these texts. I then rear-
rent manifesto I used is the Golden Rules of Filmmaking ranged these multiple voices from different manifestos
(2004) by the American film director Jim Jarmusch. into new monologues: in this way the authors talk to
From all of the manifesto authors I read, I subjectively one another while, at the same time, they are address-
chose about sixty whose manifestos I found to be ing the audience with one homogeneous voice.
the most fascinating, and also the most recitable. Or In parallel, I began to sketch different scenes in which
I chose them because they suited one another. For a woman talks in monologue, ending up with sixty
example, the comments of Vasily Kandinsky and Franz short scenes, situations right across various educa-
Marc correspond extremely well with the thoughts of tional levels and professional milieus. The only thing
Barnett Newman. And also the texts of Andr Breton these draft scenes had in common was that they are
and Lucio Fontana could be linked, while the writings being performed today, and that a woman is holding
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Manifesto
a monologue: whether a speaker by a grave at a cem- acting as well; the absurd logic in the scene has to be
etery, a primary-school teacher in front of her class, convincing. Everything has to come together in that
or a homeless person on the street. Sometimes we one moment, and thats very difficult to achieve.
listen to the womans inner voice; in other instances For me, the humour in Manifesto stems from the com-
she addresses an audience; once she even interviews bination of the spoken word and the scenario itself.
herself, etc. I finally edited everything down to twelve The interaction of certain images with text fragments
scenes and twelve corresponding text collages. A thir- happened intuitively. And I find some of them funny,
teenth collage was used for the introductory film, in although it isnt my main intention to make the audi-
which we see a burning fuse in extreme slow motion. ence laugh. For instance, the Pop Art scene. If you
Those words that remained were simply the most read a Pop Art manifesto you might at first come up
beautiful, speakable and performable ones. with the idea that we need something pop, and that
we might need a pop world in which to read that
Manifesto was filmed over a twelve-day period in manifesto. But I thought, no, actually its the oppos
Berlin in the winter of 2014. Was there any room ite. You need a background against which the Pop Art
for improvisation? manifesto could be written something more like an
Usually there is, but since this time we were work- anti-world, the fertile ground on which something
ing within a very tight time frame there wasnt much like Pop Art could actually be invented. Pop Art was
space for improvisation. Just to give you some context, clearly a statement against a certain kind of stiffness
for an arthouse film you normally produce three to in society. So I wanted to push this to the extreme and
five minutes a day. We had to produce twelve minutes I came up with the idea of using Claes Oldenburgs
a day, which is pretty similar to the timeframe of a TV I am for an Art (1961) as the text for a conservative,
soap opera. But of course we didnt want to work on religious, Southern American family saying grace
the aesthetic level of a TV soap. So we needed a very before eating lunch on Sunday. I didnt expect this
generous team and most of all a very generous actor to scene to turn out funny in the end.
work under these conditions.
One challenge was the huge amount of text to be The scene set in the classroom is also very funny.
spoken in twelve different accents which Cate had I think so too. Im a father myself and some words of
to overcome. And then each of the characters had to the class teacher in that scene actually reflect exactly
speak in a milieu represented by the colour of speech. what I would like to say to my children sometimes.
As if this werent enough, for organisational shooting And I think it resonates with us because even though
reasons sometimes we even had to cover two roles we all know how important good education is, we
per day, which also meant an additional costume and also have this sceptical anger against so-called good
makeup change each day for Cate and the hair and education. We hate to say no to our children, right?
makeup team. For these reasons and given the tight And so theres this woman in the scene, this teacher
time schedule we had to plan the shoot meticulously. who says with utter conviction, quoting Jim Jarmusch,
But, here and there, a certain amount of spontaneity Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that reso-
and improvisation was necessary. And of course Cate nates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.
might have read the text or understood the respec- A wonderful breach of taboo. Cate does it so convin
tive scene differently from me, and so sometimes she cingly. And the children are so persuasive as well. If it
surprised me with ideas emerging from the depths of werent so convincing, it would probably not be funny.
her profound experience and incredible talent. Every
day was different, like entering Wonderland, encoun- In Manifesto you have used a Sol LeWitt text
tering an entirely new world and character. And the about Conceptual Art for a scene in which Cate
way that the dialogue or better, monologue shaped Blanchett plays two characters, a news anchor
the scene was constantly shifting and exciting. And and a reporter, both called Cate. What is their
despite the highest level of concentration and dedi- relationship to LeWitts text?
cation, and the many working hours each day, Cate This is an exceptional scene in a way. Rather than
admirably retained her very special sense of humour performing a manifesto, Cate is inhabited by LeWitts
during work. We laughed a lot. writing. She is the manifesto. The tussle between logic
and illogic within the text is also inherent in the scene
Humour plays an important role in your work, and the characters. It becomes a piece of conceptual
and there is a lot of humour and absurdity in art in a way, right?
Manifesto.
Its very difficult to purposefully create humour as It does. This scene is very different to the one ded-
humour rather derives from spontaneity. To place a icated to Pop Art that you mentioned earlier. In
good joke in a film, the timing has to be good, and the fact, one of the things that is so compelling about
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Manifesto
Manifesto is this diversity every scenario is dis- That brings us to the question of actuality. In
tinguished by its unique rhythm, pace and aes- general, are these old manifestos relevant today?
thetic sensibility. Absolutely. And not just relevant, but also visionary.
Yes, I used different recipes for each scene depend- Art history is a derivation of history and we learn
ing on the text. The Manifesto of Futurism for instance, from history. Artists, as well as writers, philosophers
which is very much about speed and acceleration, is and scientists, have always been the ones who have
placed in the world of high finance: the fast-paced par- dared to formulate thoughts and visions whose con-
allel world of the stock exchange where highly efficient sistency had yet to be proven. The John Reed Club of
computer programmes have let speed become invis- New York named after the US-American commu-
ible. So in this case the scenario depicts very much a nist and journalist John Reed of which many artists
direct translation of the original thought. and writers were members, published a Draft Mani-
festo in 1932, in which a scenario of a capitalist world
You have also used manifestos by artists such as order run out of control is described. It reads as if it
the choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer, were written yesterday. Were well advised, therefore,
the filmmaker Jim Jarmusch or the architects to read artist manifestos as seismographs of their age.
Bruno Taut and Lebbeus Woods.
The writing in these manifestos is particularly beauti- Do you have a favourite manifesto?
ful. As an artist who studied architecture and works Many. And now that Cate has interpreted them all,
with film, I dont see these disciplines as far away from I care for them even more. The manifesto of the Ameri-
painting and sculpture, anyway. I especially like the can artist and architectural visionary, L
ebbeus Woods,
Bruno Taut piece in the collage of architectural mani- of 1993, comes into my mind. It is simply beautiful:
festos. The architects and filmmakers caused me some pure lyrics, beginning with the sentence, Im at war
trouble, though, because Id originally wanted there with my time, which echoes the tenor of many mani-
to be a linear and chronological progression through festo texts Ive read and used. But Woodss manifesto
the scenes combining manifestos from various crea- ends optimistically with a line full of hope: Tomor-
tive disciplines according to the school of thought row, we begin together the construction of a city.
and epoch in which they were written. But in the end
it felt better to keep all the architectural manifestos
together, and all the film manifestos together.
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Manifesto
film credits
100
Manifesto
101
Manifesto
Ballet Master and Choreographer Alien Musebunker former animal research Rommel, Caroline Link, Ires Jung, Lydia
Kickline: Maik Damboldt center Charit, Villa Palombini, Jakob-und- Korndrfer, Alfons Hug, Amanda Bross,
Stage Crew: Peter Mller (Head), Dietmar Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum / Humboldt- Ben Lightowlers, Thierry Leviez, Anne-
Spolert Universitt zu Berlin, Department of Engi- Catherine Grimal, Joachim Jger, Thomas
Light Department: Olaf Eichler (Head), neering Acoustics / Technische Universitt Ostermeier, Tobias Veit
Birger Krause, Norbert Zimmermann Berlin, Remise Bergmannstrae, library of
Sound Engineer: Thomas Heidel the Brandenburgische Technische Universi-
Director Costume and Make-up: Sylvia Zuhr tt Cottbus-Senftenberg Special thanks to
Make-up: Antje Potthast (Head), Jana
Gnle, Johannes Gundlach, Katja Palm, Cate Blanchett
Antonio Caballero Prada, Sonja Rauer Grateful
Dresser: Cordula Stummeyer (Head), thanks to Andrew Upton, Iggy, Roman, Dash,
Annette Bellmann, Karen Ellmer, Simone June Blanchett, Jamela Duncan
Fahrich, Manja Knothe, Cornelia Rach, Schiwago Film GmbH, ARRI Rental
Petra Wagner Berlin, Stefan Dll, Gabriele Huber, to all the wonderful team members and
Coordination Friedrichstadt-Palast: Ghazal Volker Frank Palm, Daniel Saltzwedel, extras
Weber Studio Babelsberg, Michael Dwel, Eike
Wolf, Eckhard Wolf, Wolf Bosse, Apple and to (in alphabetical order):
CONCEPTUAL ART / MINIMALISM Inc., Dominic Barrett, Larissa Trueby,
Extras: Jia Shen Guo, Andreas Jentzsch, Mobilespace, Mastermoves Motion Cornelia Ackers, Matthias Arndt, Ute
Julian Theiner, Morag Ross, Massimo Control, Marcel Neumann, Heinz Peter Baron, Hans-Jrn Brandenburg, Monique
Gattabrusi, David Hilgers, Alexandra Schwerfel, Tobias Werner, Axis Mundi, and Max Burger, Tschangis Chahrokh-
Hannemann, Julian Rebus, Fabian Gtz Boris Kohn, FTA Berlin, Big Image, Zadeh, Lukas Crepaz, Bina Daigeler,
Thanks to the ZDF: Delikatessen, Filmtierschule Harsch, Christoph Dehmel-Osterloh, Christoph
Production Manager: Sybille Heine Talat, Tomassini Fingerfood, Vattenfall Fisser, Massimo Gattabrusi, Florian
Hauptstadtstudio: Christian Amende Berlin, Studio P4, Franz Rembold, Boris Gellinger, Roland Gerhardt, Jeanny and
Studio Manager: Ulrich Blow Szymczak, Ghazal Weber, Silke Friedrich, Stephan Goetz, Bobby Good, Barbara
Production Engineer: Maik Kaiser Snia Pires, Shalmon Abraham, Viktor Gross, Michael Herbell, David Hilgers,
Video Technician: Dino Maluck Jakovleski (Magic sparks), Sybille Heine, Marcos Kantis, Christoph Krauss, Martin
Light Technician: Dirk-Michael Heppner Magdalene Frewer-Sauvigny, Katharina Lehwald, Kirsten Niehuus, Janaina Pessoa,
2nd Light Technician: Torsten Schwarzer Tollkhn, Nikolaus Palombini, Antonio Cristian Pirjol, Erwin Prib, Sepp Reidinger,
Grip: Alexander Schulz Mesones, Peter Klare, Mario Hohmann, Bettina Reitz, Morag Ross, Barbara
Set Manager: Silke Schramm Paul Black, 8mm Bar Berlin, Agentur Schmidt, Fabian Schmidt, Jan Schningh,
Filmgesichter, Johanna Ragwitz, Christin Tobias Staab, Markus Stemler, Suse
FILM Geigemller, Uli Nefzer, Sylvia Laskovsky, Wchter, Monika Wank, Hanse Warns,
Extras: 3rd grade Students 2014/15 of the Audi Zentrum Berlin, Moritz Baumann, Wassili Zygouris
Berlin Metropolitan School Woolrich/Fourmarketing, Frank Rauhut,
Special thanks to the staff and teachers Sebastian Harnisch, Olaf Ihlefeldt, and to all the marvellous authors of those
Jennifer Bierbaum, Friedbert Vietz, mind-blowing manifestos
Sigrid Witthft, Siegfried Ganz, Barbara
Shooting Locations Eisenhuth, Fangs F/X Ltd, Soho House Particular thanks for the generous support
Berlin, Rocchetti & Rocchetti s.r.l., Block of Manifesto to:
Berlin Metropolitan School, Friedrich & Graphics, Wellenstein, Comme des
stadt-Palast Berlin, former Olympic Village, Costumes, Kostmfundus Babelsberg, Bayerischer Rundfunk
Vattenfall Klingenberg CHP plant, Theaterkunst Kostmausstattung, Franz Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg
Studio P4 (Funkhaus Berlin), Pallasseum, Gossler Versicherungsvermittlung GmbH, Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie
BSR Abfallbehandlungswerk Sd, Ver- Brilliant Voice, Torben Rausch, Agentur Freunde des Sprengel Museum
suchsanstalt fr Wasserbau und Schiffsbau, Stimmgerecht, Bernd-Uwe Richter, Iris Hannover e.V.
Stahnsdorf South-Western Cemetery, Henninger, Ralph Remstedt, Catriona and
Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin BESSY Simon Mordant, Nina Orda, Holger Liebs, as well as to the co-producers:
II, former fertilizer factory Rdersdorf, Max Wigram, Joachim Abrell, Yvonne
Villa Rembold, Teufelsberg, ZDF- Brandl, Alex Danchev, Edgar Reitz, Donata Burger Collection Hong Kong
Hauptstadtstudio, Adler-Lwen-Kaserne, and Wim Wenders, Tom Tykwer, Peter and Ruhrtriennale
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Manifesto
Quoted MANIFESTos
Surrealism / Spatialism
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Manifesto
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