2009 - A Mutant Manifesto - Megan May
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If we recognize that every society is a petri-dish with a particular set of parameters around which a given culture is organized, then its fair to assume that modifications to the parameters can and do produce entirely different cultures.
Amongst the organisms that co-exist in each petri-dish we find the artist- philosopherscientist (feel free to suggest coinage) - a genetic mutation in the colony mysteriously compelled to hijack the experiment by hacking the parameters and introducing novel feedback relationships.
Joseph Beuys said:
"Only on condition of a radical widening of definition will it be possible for art and activities related to art to provide evidence that art is now the only evolutionaryrevolutionary power...to dismantle in order to build A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART" 1973 (emphasis original)
As a variation on Beuy's incantation, I will venture to introduce the extraordinarily bombastic point of view that the entire course of evolution on planet earth is one giant experiment in creativity and each being that concerns itself with moving outside the incidental boundaries of convention can be called an artist (for lack of a better word). I suppose this means that the mitochondria are artists too, seeing as they saw fit to join eukareotic cells, an evolutionary measure that eventually gave rise to us.
Conventions are merely experimental models that no longer yield new and interesting mutations. And this notion of convention extends from the personal to the global, or even universal. If no new models for thinking or behaving in the world arise, old paradigms wreak havoc by imposing outdated schemes on a changing world. Like trying to stop file sharing with brute force lawsuits and DRM software (which has pretty much proven ineffective thus far) instead of adapting and adjusting to a new behavior. Bureaucratic society as a whole is slow moving beast, but internet society may be its formidable successor.
It so happens that we are, quite literally, entering a period of accelerated technological and biological mutation, a radical shift in the culture that requires a re-evaluation of all prior modes of operation, creating ample opportunity for the mutants of the world. As several Space Collective members have recently pointed out, we have arrived at a very interesting moment in time where, in essence, all bets are off and radical re-thinking is not only a possibility but a survival imperative.
"Perhaps, if we set about it in the right way, we might be able to produce extraordinary things out of this strange piece of work that a man is"
> Aldous Huxley
Considering the sequence of events that, through a continuous process of trial and error, gave rise to our current moment in time, and reading the newspaper today, with its constant updates on the state of humanity, it seems more and more evident that the whole shmear is indeed one giant experiment, and if we recognize ourselves as actors within it, we are fully capable of collapsing the distinction between what is and what could be, leaving us with nothing but incentive to imagine and enact the future.
File
File:Meganmay- A Mutant Manifesto2.pdf
Links
URL: http://spacecollective.org/meganmay/4571/A-Mutant-Manifesto
Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20160327221859/http://spacecollective.org/meganmay/4571/A-Mutant-Manifesto
