Manifesto
Shock art is weak.
Sad attempts by art school rejects to do something to be noticed, meaningless, deliberately incendiary and immature attempts to claw ones way into a newspaper.
Society looks down on it, the artistic establishment looks down on it, artists look down on it. Unfortunately, all of these groups have fallen into the trap of cynicism, of apathy. Bored art students look for workable formulas to become the next Tracey Emin, to imitate success, they talk about how to get into the newspapers, how to sell their work, not about how to touch people or how to become better artists. The establishment picks up on those who are suitably obscure and safe and puts them in galleries, makes them rich so that the public can hate them and the next group of art students can start working out their next set of formulas.
Feminism is dead, the world is in a war that no one really seems to care about any more, teenagers are shooting each other in the streets, our future’s are gone and dead and no one cares, we just keep buying things and treading on and fulfilling the formulas of life.
We’re all so very tired.
We’ve stopped living, and started sleep walking.
We need to be woken up, we need to be shocked. We need shock art.
So it’s facile and immature and inferior and whatever else you may dismiss it as, it’s a break away from cynicism and a break into life.
We are sick to death of sleepwalking, we are here to wake you up, we are here to scream into the air that we are here, that you have sold our futures and degraded our bodies and insulted our hope and that we are here and we are alive and you can not take this from us!
We will scream from tables and soapboxes and rooftops that we are alive and we are breathing and that we care and we create, that we are young and angry and justified and ancient and that if you find this shocking then good, because that means you might just have woken up.
People are dying, the world is dying, our rights are being taken away and artists are more dangerous than you realize.
Now please,
Scream with us.
Sad attempts by art school rejects to do something to be noticed, meaningless, deliberately incendiary and immature attempts to claw ones way into a newspaper.
Society looks down on it, the artistic establishment looks down on it, artists look down on it. Unfortunately, all of these groups have fallen into the trap of cynicism, of apathy. Bored art students look for workable formulas to become the next Tracey Emin, to imitate success, they talk about how to get into the newspapers, how to sell their work, not about how to touch people or how to become better artists. The establishment picks up on those who are suitably obscure and safe and puts them in galleries, makes them rich so that the public can hate them and the next group of art students can start working out their next set of formulas.
Feminism is dead, the world is in a war that no one really seems to care about any more, teenagers are shooting each other in the streets, our future’s are gone and dead and no one cares, we just keep buying things and treading on and fulfilling the formulas of life.
We’re all so very tired.
We’ve stopped living, and started sleep walking.
We need to be woken up, we need to be shocked. We need shock art.
So it’s facile and immature and inferior and whatever else you may dismiss it as, it’s a break away from cynicism and a break into life.
We are sick to death of sleepwalking, we are here to wake you up, we are here to scream into the air that we are here, that you have sold our futures and degraded our bodies and insulted our hope and that we are here and we are alive and you can not take this from us!
We will scream from tables and soapboxes and rooftops that we are alive and we are breathing and that we care and we create, that we are young and angry and justified and ancient and that if you find this shocking then good, because that means you might just have woken up.
People are dying, the world is dying, our rights are being taken away and artists are more dangerous than you realize.
Now please,
Scream with us.