[For the complete publication, which included contributions from Jean-Paul Kelly and Anne Walk, click here.]

 

Fennel Plunger Corporation Manifesto

 

What is a manifesto? And, above all, what is a manifesto in relation, for instance, to the art to which it belongs? It is not a theory of art or a conceptual rendering of art. A manifesto is an integral part of works of art; it belongs to the (new) process of artistic practice. It is an artistic act. One cannot easily separate or oppose art and its manifesto. Without simply coinciding, they are bound together in an inherent and essential way. Perhaps the most concise formula for their relationship would stipulate that the manifesto is the "speech of art." Manifestos constitute and introduce a singular point of enunciation. In them, art speaks in the first person; their form of enunciation is always something like "I, the (new) art, am speaking." The manifesto does not usually declare: "This or that happened in art, and art will never be the same again. This is an event." It says: "I (or we) happened (are happening, will happen).

— Alenka Zupacic, The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two

 

 

Fennel Plunger Corporation endorses Zupacic's characterization of the manifesto, though we wish to extend it so that it does not pertain solely to art, let alone new art. For new art must surely be a horribly unnecessary thing. Hasn't the old art already exceeded sufficiency? Isn't it already enough already? Do we really want more? Let every gesture be an old gesture, preciously antique. Via camp we extend art into life. What is the difference between art and life? Very little, provided one reduces one's life to a glittering surface. According to the tenets of camp — a quaint, if remarkably resilient, form of social expression — every gesture is a manifesto. It won't get you laid and it won't get you loved, but at least you'll be spared that particular Hell Jesus has reserved for ordinary hypocrites. And what of the tired indexicality of the photographic image? Enough said! Do we have anything to declare as we cross the borders of propriety? Only our genius, tired customs officials.

 

Our work may not always seem artificial, and in spite of everything you might recognize in it the call of the blood. The reason is that in the night we may become roused by some dream-mangled memory of the previous day and rise and strike our foreheads at some door, freeing an anguished memory that had been haunting us since the world began. Forgive us for it. Our work aims to be without blood.

— Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers

 

Small in all our parts but large in abstract virtue.