Utopias and Manifestos

First of all we've already dealt with the term Utopia earlier this year, which we defined as what one would see as a perfect dream world where everything is all purely good and everyone is happy to live during that time period. Now a manifesto is a public declaration of one's (or even belonging to a group) policy of aims, this is usually a written piece of announcement of some goals which had never been thought of before. People had been writing manifestos for years in which they identify their utopian ideals and what they see as to be the recipe for a "perfect world", one of these people which wrote a manifesto was Philippo Marinetti and he wrote a manifesto to accompany an art movement which he was the founder of, the Futurist movement. In the manifesto he introduces the new art as something which consists of speed, movement and simultaneity. Another art movement which was accompanied by a manifesto was the Dada movement and the De Stijl movement in which the authors of these manifestos also describe the art of that specific movement as something which had never been done before that is the primary reason these people were labelled the avante garde (people way ahead of their time). The following is a copy of a manifesto by the two MGI (Midrand Graduate Institute) in Bloemfontein in which they describe and give an idea of how today's youth would describe someone with an utopian ideal:

As things are in the modern day, it is very hard as an artist to come up with a different style of art that has not yet been created. The reason I say that is because everything has been done! Even mixing different styles to try and form your own has been redone many times. Although we have different styles of art, artists today sort of like plagiarize past artists like Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh and many others. Today it is very hard to be a successful artist because your art will be constantly compared to paintings like the three women by Otto, and even crazy works like the fountain by mutt.

The only way for an artist to stay relevant in today’s world is to tell himself that although whatever it is he dreams of doing has been done, he will just do it either way so he gets it out of the way. It is true that many art styles has been accomplished but no two people can experience or present something in the same way although it is one theme or concept.Therefore the artist should stay true to himself, follow his heart and make peace with the fact he won’t come with anything that might be that new to the world but can present something new using the old ways of doing it.

Art in today’s world is being used mainly as a political tool, either for or against certain political values or in short we should say is being used as political satire or metaphors to ridicule stupidity within the political system. Although some artists express themselves in an explicit and controversial way when painting political images they bring in other elements that have the power to influence a country in a negative way. A perfect example of the above mentioned situation would be the picture dubbed “The spear” because it took us a step backward in terms of fighting racism, although the person depicted does act in the manner that the image suggest.

As the Futurists suggested that with technology making everything easier and mass productions causes things to be made faster, today manifesto is simply seen as an article or a facebook post or note judging by people's reaction to it. The current generation is mostly interested in the future and seem to be bored with everything of the past as time changes they do not expect to live as their parents and grandparents lived because of the way technology has an influence on everyone's lives and causing them to desire urbanisation more. We cannot exercise our cultural traditions anymore because of how the Western  lifestyles had an influence on our lifestyles and values, the transition of our lifestyles from the villages to the urban modern world happened too quickly and with the simultaneity of too many things happening at the same time that all we want is a break from everything else including, school, studying, work, relationships, people and everything. It is hard to be recognized in anything these days as there is way too much competition and people who works harder than you with some even doing better than you would ever do without giving yourself any sleep and they doing it without even trying their best.