'Not as a war cry but a warning': New life for the avant-garde manifesto

Formism (Formizm), a movement that began in Kraków in 1917 and issued manifestos such as Leon Chwistek’s ‘The Plurality of the Realities in Art’ (1918), exemplified the frenzy of manifesto writing that swept Europe in the wake of the publication in 1909 of ‘The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism’. Manifestos were indispensable to modernist and avant-garde movements, from Vorticism to Dada and Surrealism to Formism and Sensationism. From Paris, Milan and Moscow to London, Kraków, Lisbon and every corner of Europe, the avant-garde manifesto crossed the Atlantic to New York and gradually made its way around the globe – to Martinique (Légitime Défense), China (Storm Society), Argentina (Arte Madi), Iran (Fighting Cock), India (Calcutta Group), Nigeria (Zaria Art Society), and elsewhere. The manifesto became a truly global genre and a calling card for international isms of all kinds. It has also always been linked to violence and (in the words of Marinetti) the waging of art as ‘war on a nightly basis’. Manifesto writing was revived in the 1960s, more militant than ever, as a key form of the second-wave avant-garde. In this century it has been linked to mass shootings and other violent acts. Despite this history and these associations, does the manifesto still hold promise as a radically progressive form – in the words of Bruno Latour, something that might serve ‘Not as a war cry … but rather as a warning’?

Since the birth of the internet, the manifesto has developed in strikingly new and often intersectional directions. It has been used to announce new tendencies at the crossroads of technology and feminism (Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, ‘The Feminist Data Manifest-No’, Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto), technology and decolonisation (‘Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto’, ‘Decolonial AI Manyfesto’), and various combinations of race, gender, climate change, computing – and of course art. The manifesto has gone beyond a simple ‘war cry’ to become a popular form, absorbed into mainstream culture through advertising, activism, and social media. The past few years have seen an explosion of manifestos calling for a break from old ways, protests in the present, and change for the future. This paper will trace a genealogy from the historical avant-garde to current manifestations, as well as presenting new uses of manifesto writing and other avant-garde techniques combined with future scenarios in an ongoing European project – arguing that the manifesto is still a vital, provocative, and ultimately constructive form.