The Lazarus Manifesto

A self-proclaimed Futurist? I firmly feel that a Futurist, as with all forms of passionate endeavour, is born and not made. Although they may not be born into the society that promotes it, once discovered, a Muslim will know that they are a Muslim, a Jew, a Jew and so on. To choose a secular example is not done through arrogance or the wish to shock but through the belief that Futurism is about the way you live your life, not just your artistic preferences. Not only is my art based around the machine aesthetic and my attempts to capture motion (not the illusionist’s sham of speed blur, more an expression of the excitement of motion and power) but I also feel the excitement of the revolutionary when I read the manifestos. Thus I stake my claim of being a Futurist but I leave it to my peers to decide whether I may stand with the like-minded individuals that I admire. There are those who look on the Futurists as being a part of history, a fashion that has had its time and belongs now only to museums and textbooks. Surely this is directly contrary to the purpose of the Futurist movement? Just as those who do not see past the products of the Bauhaus and attribute a "style" to it, they only see the expression of the Futurist's formative years and do not understand its deeper resonances. By default the Futurist is always now, the only tense is the present. The past tense is all that has gone. I reject the consignment of all that has passed to the bin, I look to those I admire for inspiration but I do not slavishly follow. The future tense is invalid, it means that I see what may be but do not have the drive or the wit to achieve it, it is an admission of failure. Therefore it is always now. This document, if it is truly Futurist, is only the record of a Futurist's act. The art is only valid during the act of creation, the painting or text or music is only its record, to show what has been achieved.

And about what do I muse? This is a distillation of my thoughts and philosophies; this is the very act of laying out my credentials for claiming to be a Futurist. It is through this that I seek the approval and acceptance of those that I feel drawn to and within whom I recognise myself. My first and most important proclamation is that the time is right for change. This is why the powerhouse of Futurism has to once more come to the fore. With the heady cocktail that is my despite of the current and my love of the emergent I propose a toast to today's fox, and today's fox is the barren and bankrupt artistic endeavours that I see feted around me. I find the tent of Tracey Emin, scrawled with the names of past sexual encounters ironic; it symbolizes better than anything else the prostitution of ability for acclaim amongst the poseurs and self-promoters. The clique that are the art establishment - exclusionists and dilettantes. No longer is shock value enough, it merely serves to emphasize the lack of dynamics, move on! If nothing else art should have a degree of the aesthetic, it should serve society and for this it needs to engage. I do not think that the public has to be lead by the nose, they - we - are sophisticated enough to look for deeper meanings but the art should not repel. It does not matter how loudly you shout your message if no one is listening. I do not even believe that consciously having a message is compulsory. The act of creation and its result are a true expression of the artist (although of course this may reveal more than the artist wishes), so long as the artist has an experience or view worth sharing it will reveal itself. The worst crime though is plagiarism, anything created without the white-hot spark of originality is worthless. This has to be central to the Futurist ethic.

The first wave of Futurists flourished within the hothouse fed by the mechanization of industry, the opening of the world to all, the widespread dissemination and proliferation of ideas. It is only fitting that the age of mass communication should give birth to the second wave. Here is the first major step forward for the expression of ideas and ideals since the printing press, though as with the press it is only a tool. Am I alone in seeing virtual reality as the opium of the new generations? The apparently benign flickering screen slowly and insidiously amputates the senses, we follow Lara Croft not into her's but our own, numbing, oblivion. How can we hope to express the excitement of life if we experience it only in this anaemic third hand variety? Death to virtual reality, long live real reality! And what of those who provide the tools? The danger I see in the likes of Microsoft is the danger of the tyranny of globalisation. There are infinite horizons but you can only see what they will let you. This is more subtle than the despots of the past, they only had politics with which to enforce their own views and morals, but it still remains that we are fed only the sanitized, sanctioned world that those in control wish us to see. Our only hope is to remain suspicious of that which we have not experienced first hand, to maintain the individual, to resist being drawn into the McDonald eating, Coke drinking, Disney watching society that do not have, and do not deserve, any right of self-determination. Conformity is death.

A word of caution to end this diatribe. I agree with the pioneering Futurists that war is the ultimate expression of Futurism but I do not think that this makes war in itself desirable. Likewise I do not think we can dismiss the past, if nothing else how can we pursue the novel if we do not know what has gone before? Nor do I automatically embrace all that is new, value judgments have to be made. My own favourite example is the way that the English language is evolving through the use of "text messages". There are those I am sure who will champion this as the much needed hauling of the staid and moribund into the contemporary. I would suggest that they look at the subtlety that can be expressed now and that which the new allows before wholeheartedly following the new.