http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/N/Neoism.htm
Neoism refers both to a specific
subcultural network of artistic performance and media experimentalists and more
generally to a practical underground philosophy. It operates with collective
pseudonyms, pranks, plagiarism and fakes, and has created multiple
contradicting definitions of itself in order to defy categorization and
historization.
Definitions of Neoism and Neoist activity are currently disputed.
The main source of this are splits within the Neoist network which created
vastly different, often tactically distorted accounts of Neoism and its history
(such as the split between the British Neoist Alliance and the American-European Neoist network exemplified in the books of Stewart Home as
opposed to http://www.neoism.net neoism.net). In non-Neoist terms, Neoism
could be called an international subculture which in the beginning put itself
into simultaneous continuity and discontinuity with, among others, experimental
arts (such as Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus and Concept Art), punk
culture, industrial music and electropop,
political and religious free-spirit movements, Science Fiction literature, 'pataphysics and
speculative science.
Neoism also gathered players with backgrounds in graffiti and street performance, language writing (later known as language poetry), experimental film and video, Mail Art, the
early Church of the Subgenius and gay and lesbian
culture.
Neoism then gradually transformed from an active subculture into a self-written
urban legend. As a
side effect, many other subcultures, artistic and political groups since the
late 1980s have - often vaguely - referred to Neoism and thereby
perpetuated its myth.
Founded in 1979 by multiple persona Monty Cantsin in
In the early 1980s, the Neoist Reinhard U. Sevol founded Anti-Neoism, which other Neoists adopted by declaring Neoism a
pure fiction created by Anti-Neoists. The Dutch Neoist Arthur Berkoff operated as a one-person-movement
"Neoism/Anti-Neoism/Pregroperativism". Al Ackerman declared himself a "Salmineoist" after the rock musician Sal Mineo. In
1994, Stewart Home
founded the Neoist Alliance as an occult order with himself as the magus. At
the same time, Italian
activists of the Luther Blissett project operated under the name "Alleanza Neoista". In 1997,
the critic Oliver Marchart organized a "Neoist World Congress" in
Neoist plays like multiple names, plagiarism and pranks were adopted, frequently mistaken for Neoism proper
and by mixing in situationist concepts, in other subcultures such as the Plagiarism and
Art Strike 1990-1993 campaigns of the late 1980s (triggered largely by Stewart Home after
he had left the Neoist network), Plunderphonics music, the refounded London Psychogeographical
Association, the Association of Autonomous
Astronauts, the Luther Blissett project, the Michael K Project, the German Communication Guerilla, and,
since the late 1990s, by some net artists such as 0100101110101101.org. Other artists who explictly if vaguely
credit Neoism are the KLF and Alexander Brener/Barbara Schurz.
ULTIMATE MANIESTO
http://www.neoism.net/
Two girls wearing silver
overalls and Monty Cantsin-look alike masks visited
Monty Cantsin. The first girl said: "I bet this is an allegory." The
second said: "You have won." The first said: "But only
allegorically." The second said: "No, in reality. In allegory, you
have lost."
Hello
and welcome to Neoism, the international movement of games and total freedom.
It may be difficult for the casual audience to understand or appreciate Neoism
because Neoism is the vehicle of its own understanding. Neoism simply means
that what is done in its name is simultaneously new ("neo") and
established ("ism"). It does not imply that it is original. In this
sense, Neoism makes past, present and future the same, rendering them
pointless. With time left behind them, Neoists find any obsession with freedom
futile. Neoism is not a means to freedom, but supports censorship as a
radically populist cultural practice. In the same spirit, Neoism prescribes arbitrary
game rules to put the lives of Neoists under the discipline of rigorous
combinatorics, with perpetual permutations. The purpose of Neoism is to
reinforce mnemonic structures on the mental plane and so invigorate culture. Of
all values and norms we believe the value of tradition is the greatest; this is
the one we try hardest to reinforce.
In
a Neoist view, the world is not things colliding in space, but a random array
of disconnected phenomena. Neoism does not conceive of the spatial as lasting
in time. Since every phenomenon is irreducible, the mere act of giving it a
name implies falsification. The paradox however is that
names and philosophies exist in Neoism, in countless numbers. There are Neoists
who consider a certain pain, a green tint of yellow, a temperature, a certain
tone the only reality. Other Neoists perceive all people having sex as the same
being, and all people memorizing a line of Shakespeare as Shakespeare. Another
group of Neoists has reached the point of denying time. It reasons that the
present is undefined, that the future has no reality but as present hope, that
the past is no more than present memory. Yet another group has it that the
history of the universe is the handwriting produced by a minor god
communicating with a demon. Those Neoists think that the world is an emblem
with a lost subscription where only that which happens every three hundredth
night is true. Other Neoists believe that while we are asleep here, we are
awake somewhere else, so that everyone is two. Books are rarely signed, and the
notion of plagiarism does not exist.
Neoism is, above all, a prefix and a suffix
without anything in between. According to Neoist sources, it was founded in the
year 1346. Since then, Neoism has permanently been about to dissolve. Some
Neoists even claim that Neoism never existed and is a mere invention of its
enemies, Anti-Neoists. Since Neoism is indivisible, it cannot grasp itself, and
anyone who wants to grasp it has to be an Anti-Neoist. And since the Neoists
want to create a situation in which a definition of Neoism would make no sense,
attempts to write off Neoism by historicizing it are just part of the Neoist
cultural conspiracy. Obsessed with speculation, reality adjustment and mad
science, Neoists produced nothing but manipulations of their own and other
histories.
When such manipulations make it impossible to
differentiate between words and things, the structure of things must begin to
repair itself. Neoism
is here to fix these things once and for all. Neoist names like Monty Cantsin,
Akademgorod, Neoism are regarded not as artificial, but as tangible symbols so
that everything done with them immediately affects the
things they represent. At first, Neoism was probably nothing but a collection
of obscure in-jokes and ironical references. They were elaborated into fanciful
allegories and hieroglyphs whose points only insiders would get. Later, their
hidden allusions were forgotten, and the signs were taken for themselves. Since
they obviously had to mean something, Neoists had to reinvent their meaning.
The remotest analogies between signs and meanings were constructed until Neoism
became an art of concordant discord, a sphere with as many coordinates as
diameters, a self-refuting perpetuum mobile.
The
pompous claims and the solemn pathos of Neoism had an extraordinary impact on
naive people. Rich with obscurity, riddles and esoteric subtexts, Neoist
writing such as "The Disposal of Truth," "Mind Invaders,"
"The Seven by Nine Squares," "The Book of Neoism,"
"The Universe in Contention" and "Dialectical
Immaterialism" tries nothing less than a complete reinvention of culture. Neoist achievements allegedly include time travel, the
transformation of blood into gold, inexpensive telepathic technology and, more
generally, collective control over matter, space and time by manipulating
things through their names. Neoism finally claims to have overcome the
parameters of life and death, offering immortality to everyone: Through the name Monty Cantsin, Neoists live and explore the
paradox of a subjectivity that is one and multiple, collectively realizing
individuality and abandoning it in the end. The result of this experiment is a
simultaneous "both/and" and "neither/nor" as the principle
of all Neoist thinking.
A
chief concern of Neoism is to turn people into players. This is to be gradually
achieved. First, Neoism denies there is a game. Second, it hides the rules from
those involved. Third, it gives them all penalties and no wins. Fourth, it
removes all goals, enforces their playing, inhibits
their enjoying. Fifth, it makes them look like players, but forbids them
playing. To make everyone remain a piece in the game, it permits him to
associate only with pieces and denies the existence of players.
Imagine
a house. Six walls. A house, no door,
no window. A person inside that house. The
house consists of nine squares, 20 feet across and 20 feet high and 20 feet
wide. But the person's diameter is only 19 feet. His awareness is only 19 feet.
Does he see the walls? No! Neoism makes him think he is a one-lifetimer, and
his awareness goes down to 18 feet. And when it goes down to 18 feet, Neoism
moves its walls in to 19 feet. When Neoism gets him down to the size of a fist,
its walls are the size of stretched out arms, and
things have been nicely repaired. And if anybody jumps out of the line, we got
lobotomy, shock treatment, Siberia - whatever you want, baby, we have it here.
So
be on your guard! Watch Neoism. Take it home. Don't be ignorant. Neoism is
compassionate, and it is cruel. Be on your guard! Don't hate its obedience and
don't love its self-control. Don't dismiss it in its weakness, and don't be
afraid of its power. Why do you despise its fear and curse its pride? It lives
in fears and strengthens in trembling. Neoism is stupid and it is wise. Neoism
will be silent among the silent, and it will appear
and speak. Why then have you dismissed it?
Neoism
appears when you are away, and it hides when you appear. Take it home to places
which are ugly and in ruin. Out of shame, take it home and scatter its members
shamelessly. Approach it and turn away. Neoism is the reading that is
attainable to anything; it is the speech that cannot be grasped.
If
you want to understand Neoism, differentiate. If you want to know what it's all
about, understand its philosophy. Understand its technical application, and
study Neoism in its own words. Conceptual understanding is of importance here.
Not everything in Neoism is of equal value. Neoism has its own opinion, and it has a right to keep its own opinion. And
boy, it's got some wild opinions. You oughta hear them sometime. But that's a
different thing... a different thing... and you can tell very easily when it
swings over into its opinion, when it starts rambling about this or that. Take
it as amusing, but it doesn't have anything really to do with Neoism. Neoism
itself is cleaner than a wolf's tooth. There are a lot of wolves' teeth out
there and they aren't too clean.
Neoism
is clean because it does not exist except in the reactions it creates. Some
Neoists used the experimental arts to promote the Neoist values of tradition
and speculation. Neoism, in this disguise, was a movement that created the
illusion of a movement called Neoism. After various mutations, Neoism developed
an increasingly complex web of contradictory self-descriptions, a hermeneutic
drift that leads every Neoist to re-interpret Neoism in any suitable way.
Neoist self-descriptions soon became an impassable maze. This explains why it
is so difficult to approach Neoism whose only work has been a never-ending
monologue about itself. To complicate things even further, Neoists now refuse
categorically to reply to any questions or requests for information about
Neoism.
Neoism
is like porn movies: The subject has no importance,
logic is unneccessary, there is an accumulation of well-known things, the focus
is always on the same explicit facts, repetition and boredom rule. One is
tempted to believe that Neoism once had some sort of intelligible shape and is
now only a broken-down remnant. Yet this does not seem to be the case; at least
there is no sign of it. By its own standards, Neoism is irrefutable, perhaps
the only perfection in mankind that has superseded nature. In any case, closer
scrutiny is impossible, since it is extraordinarily nimble and can never be
laid hold of. It lurks by turns in the stairways, the lobbies, the entrance
halls. Often it can't been seen for years; then it has
presumably moved elsewhere. It always comes faithfully back to your place
again. By differentiating a little bit, one can get the true intention of what
Neoism tries to accomplish. Neoism is sound where there is sound. It really
wants to help people and at last we owe it great respect for that.
Join
us, we want war with you. Cursed be anyone who doesn't believe us.