The Cumul Manifesto
I. We declare this the Cumul manifesto, a manifesto grounded on several principles.
We declare that by “we,” we mean you.
We declare that by “you,” we mean us.
We declare that the avant-garde is still viable and possible in this day and age.
We declare ourselves members of the viable avant-garde of the now.
We declare that the form of the manifesto is still relevant to our self-realization as actors within the viable avant-garde of the now.
We declare that the manifesto is a schizophrenic statement that should intrude onto art and be absorbed and assimilated into it.
We declare that the manifesto is a speech act that is self-actualizing as it is spoken, but that the manifesto does not only have to be spoken to come to life.
We declare that the convention of spoken language is ample and adequate for us, but for our solitude, our intimate games, and our literature, we no longer need it.
We declare that the unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, of what has been removed as the result of ancient prohibitions.
We declare that our voices are a synthesis, a rhythm, and exploration of imagination.
II. We will own our experience of copyrighted content.
We will go forth with shocking and informative content.
We will perform in the sewers and in the mansions.
We will embrace all that we denounce.
III. We hold that we have drawn back the curtain on the depravity of man, and that it is a painful, dreadful spectacle which has opened up before us.
We hold that Post Modernism, in its adolescent attempt to ape the clever and witty in modern art, has shown itself to be lost in a cul-de-sac of idiocy.
We hold that any attempt to conciliate this inexplicable momentary state with logic strikes us as a boring kind of game.
We hold that life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to abolish logic which is the dance of those impotent to create.
We hold that abstraction and illusion rule in knowledge, and that domination rules in practice.
We hold that it is essential to regain enthusiasm (from the Greek, “en theos” meaning to be possessed by God).
We hold that if we continue to do something, it will because it amuses us, or rather because we have a need for activity, which we will use up and satisfy wherever we can.
We hold that though we are artists, we are not clowns to entertain the wealthy (though sometimes clowning around is fun).
We hold that art is not the most precious manifestation of life.
We hold that art has not the celestial and universal value that people like to attribute to it.
We hold that life is far more interesting.
IV. We are for art that is political-erotical-mystical, even though our art will probably be accused of tormented and decadent cerebralism.
We are for an art that sheds hair.
We are for the art of rust and mold.
We are for a post-gender world.
V. We are shaping the image—the design and the essence—of what we are becoming.
We are the architects of our existence.
We are resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity.
We are terminators of the moral code, mercenaries of slime.
We are the virus of the new world disorder.
We are the modern cunt.
We are Cumul.
