man·i·fes·to
MIT HTC SMArchS Student Jackie Xu’s essay “New Interventionist Manifesto” (2020) is a manifesto for the ages. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, manifesto derives from the latin manifestus, meaning “obvious” and manifesto, “to make public.” Indeed, Xu’s manifesto makes obvious the invisible frameworks of capitalism that undergird the art market. In their abstract, copied below, Xu gestures to a reality that has existed for decades. They critique the idea that art is a finished product, neatly wrapped and displayed, and always subjugated to the spinning wheels of the economy. Instead, as Xu argues, art resists. It pushes back against completion. It helps shape, and is always being shaped, by culture.
In its modern definition, the OED defines manifesto as:
a. A public declaration or proclamation, written or spoken;
b. In extended use: a book or other work by a private individual supporting a cause, propounding a theory or argument, or promoting a certain lifestyle.(1)
Following these definitions, the “New Interventionist Manifesto” asserts, “we regard art not as our final destination but one of the many arenas of radical intervention.” Drawing from the PAD/D and the Universal Lab, Xu demands that art should be an agent, not “a side project,” in the making of an alternative solidarity economy (Figures 1-4). In other words, art has the ability – no, the duty – to compel a radical democracy.
Fig. 1. Political Art Documentation/Distribution. Front page of Political Art Documentation/Distribution’s newspaper, issue 1. Available from: Dark Matter Archive, http://www.darkmatterarchives.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/PADD.FirstIssue.1981.No_.1.pdf (accessed December 1, 2020).
New Interventionist Manifesto
Abstract by MIT HTC SMArchS Student Jackie Xu:
The art world today has become a carnival–a theatrical organization of social risks faced by the capitalist totality. The Manifesto illustrates how the art world absorbs resistance and neutralizes threats with two cases: (1) the life and death of the self-organized artist collective Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D); and (2) the theatrical resurrection of the utopian Universal Lab in artist/activist Dan Peterman’s commissioned art project Excerpts from the Universal Lab: Plan B. The fate of these two potentially subversive projects showcases that what once threatened to contaminate the sterility of white cube ideology is now tamed with death on a pedestal and transformed into cultural and economic capital.
From left: Fig. 2. Political Art Documentation/Distribution. The non-hierarchical internal structure of Political Art Documentation/Distribution. Available from: Dark Matter Archive, http://www.darkmatterarchives.net/?page_id=72 (accessed December 1, 2020). Fig. 3. Dan Peterman, Excerpts from the Universal Lab: Plan B, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2006. Fig. 4. Dan Peterman, Excerpts from the Universal Lab: Plan B, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2006.
This is a manifesto for the dissidents who seek to disrupt the carnival from within, for the artworkers who see our art world today as a totality set within the larger totality of capitalism, a political economy grounded in its own renewal and reproduction. The New Interventionists go beyond tactics and tools of creative artistic disruption. We regard art not as our final destination but one of the many arenas of radical intervention. For our critical intervention to achieve its full potential, our activism should not be a symbol that can be safely encapsulated in the artwork as a final product. We need to live resistance and participate in establishing solidarity within and, more importantly, beyond the art world. We do not ask" “what can art do for a radical political economy?”; the framing of that question leaves the art world as a capitalist totality intact. It relegates “activist art/socially-oriented art” to a gestural side project. [Rather], we ask “what must art do to earn its place in an alternative solidarity economy?” This begins by thinking about how we can transfer resources to enabling structures and supportive organizations or radical democracy and learning the lessons of PAD/D and the Universal Lab.
Like art that is also evolving, Jackie Xu’s manifest is also a work-in-progress. The New Interventionist Manifesto abstract is the tip of the iceberg. In their working manifesto, Xu discusses the ways in which PAD/D and the Universal Lab can teach us about art’s agency in the building of a radical democracy.
(1) Oxford English Dictionary, “Manifesto,” https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/113499?rskey=cQyXe1&result=1#eid