It would sound unnecessarily exaggerated and almost romantic, even a bit ridiculous, to shout ‘Down with…’ or something similar today. You could say that the interview, the podium discussion, the talk show, the dialectically led discourse have replaced the former loud bellowing sole claim of the manifesto. The manifesto as a medium of artistic articulation has become less relevant in a globalized art world.

The art scene today is a global network and business with diverse means of expression. The art scene at the beginning of the last century was still very small and those writers of art manifestos were again a minority within this tiny art scene. Yes, most of the manifestos that I have included in Manifesto are from the European avant-garde in the early twentieth century, with others from the neoavant-garde in the 1960s. The texts you have selected come largely from the first half of the last century. So I read the artist’s manifesto firstly as an expression of defiant youth, then as literature, as poetry – so to say, Sturm und Drang remastered. Thus their manifestos are not only texts which are intended to turn art – and eventually the whole world – upside down and revolutionise it at the same time they are testimonials about the search for identity, shouted out into the world with great insecurity. But we shouldn’t forget that these texts were usually written by very young men who had barely left home when they reached for the pen. Art historians tend to regard everything created and written by artists with reverence and respect, as if, from day one, the artists themselves intended their work to become part of art history. You can either play in a punk band, start yelling at your parents or your teachers – or you can write or make art. A manifesto often represents the voice of a young generation, confronted with a world they don’t agree with and they want to go against. As we move beyond adolescence, we leave home and scream out our newly discovered fury at the world. Today I think of the manifesto as a rite of passage, not only for young artists but also for young people in general. No, I must admit that they were not important to me in the past.

Were manifestos important to you as a young artist?

Manifesto is an homage to the beauty of artists’ manifestos – a manifesto of manifestos. I have used the title Manifesto as a clear statement that the focus in this work is above all on texts, whether by visual artists, filmmakers, writers, performers or architects – and on the poetry of these texts. ‘Manifesto’ is a word with a lot of historical weight. In: JULIAN ROSEFELDT: MANIFESTO, Koening Books, 2016 Interview with Julian Rosefeldt (extract)

Manifesto del surrealismo pdf