MANIFESTO – The Artists Will Set You Free

The Artists Will Set You Free

There are no paintings, no sculptures, no books of poems. There are only conversations between the creator and the canvas , the chisel and the stone, the pen and the paper, all asking: What could you be?

And the dialogue does not stop there. The art asks the audience and the audience answers even if only to say: I do not understand. The creator asks the canvas, creating art; and the art asks the audience and the questions spread. Why? Why this way and not that? Why him and not her? Why your favoured son in the grand chair, why my daughter in the sweat shop? This is what the hegemonies fear.

The questions breed questions. A population explosion, immeasurable, restless. What is the story of the unmade bed? What tide washed in the room full of sunflower seeds? Why do some have no water, and some drink only sugar syrup?

Art is a meritocracy. The questions and the conversation do not see rags or riches, colour, gender, preference, height, weight, they only hear the questions asked as the chisel falls, as ink flows to the nib.

The hegemonies fear for their control is based on illusion. They fear because one mind wide awake can pierce the veil of dreams they wrap us in, cuddled and coddled and exploited. A feedback loop of fantasy in which we are sullied and despoiled.

The questions and the conversations and the dialogues are locked in vaults. They are traded at great price, commodities, goods, merchandised to cheapen their meaning. They are caged in wealth. The chosen, favoured creators gagged by privilege. Money is the divisive wedge.

The rest languish, ignored, the susurrus of the silenced in abandonment, daubed with the discounted cross of price: This has no monetary value – Therefore it has no value. Our language has been suborned and yet we live out our lives without outrage.

The only true currency is communication. What questions does the art make you ask? Does it fuel your courage with indignation? Does it make you inquisitive? Does it wake you from your lives of silence and subservience? If it makes the questions bubble up from beneath the somnolence of soap operas, quiz shows and celebrity worship then the art has some purpose, it has meaning, it has value.

The artists will set you free. They will show you chains you do not know you wear. They will draw back the lace curtains from the cage of thought in which you are trapped. They will make you question the burdens you have become so accustomed to you do not know you bear them. The will smash the yokes of ignorance and blindness with which you plough your birthright for the table of another.

You could have a walk on part in this war of ideas that is long overdue. Did you even know your freedom has been traded for shallow comforts? The sweat of your labour is stolen back from your hands with goods you don’t need made by slaves you will never see, paid for with your own bondage.

The artists will set you free. They will carve the faces of the unschooled children who make your trainers into the soaring walls of corporate mansions. They will spatter the overpasses with the strip mined landscapes where the precious metals for your hybrid car are ripped from the earth. They will bend wires into the spirals of despair and destitution faced by those who don’t fit the narrow confines of the corporate capitalist model.

The artists will set you free. Feed them, hear them, invite them into your homes and hearts. Challenge them to wake you with the truth, and listen when they scream it, raucous, uncouth, uncontained. Ask the questions they ask you. Demand answers and the hegemonies will fear you, hate you, hurt you. Give your own life meaning. Overturn the illusion of your privilege, where the best part of your production lines the pockets of those with plenty.

There will be peril, but at the end of the chain of questions there may be equity.


In a similar vein a recent post from someone I follow: Let us judge Art by QUALITY not POPULARITY!

And off on the consumerism tangent – check out What’s the deal with consumerism?

This piece was brushed off from its initial incarnation because a daily prompt asked for a manifesto and mine has not changed.
