STEPS:
EDITING:
-coherence, grammar and spelling
-synthesizing the points or sentences that were repeated
-organising the points in a more coherent order
CONTEXT:
About context I mean giving a meaning or an use to the manifesto not only as a class project. After checking the effect the manifesto had on some friends and the questions that they were making to themselves after reading it (feeling they were losing too much time working on things that weren’t making them happy) I thought the manifesto would may be useful as well for other creatives or people in general that sometimes feel lost in routine and forget “what is the important thing” for them.
I proposed a budget of 20 pounds to expend on prints, it would be printed in A4 two sides and folded by the middle so it would be easy to print, also available to print half sized if necessary and I could leave copies around Bristol’s art centers and cafes.
Making this choice the manifesto gets a mind challenging objective. It stops being only a scholar piece to become a creative experiment that remind us not to forget what really matters.
THE IMPORTANT THING
1.1- The important thing isn’t to work doing power point presentations for a lawyer bureau even if the dental insurance is good.
1.2- To work in an agency is not the important thing if you just make coffees for the art director. Don’t give up doing work for yourself because you feel overloaded by external works that are not what you really want to do. Those works are not the important thing. What you really want to do is the important thing
2.1- To be just a tool or to become an adobe programmable robot is not the important thing, we are already way too alienated by the system to also make our passion become automatised.
2.2- Conventional and expected design, is not the important thing. To produce that conventional design which passes through the ring of the “only for the sells” specification and where creativity is invisible and buries your motivation is not the important thing.
3- The important thing is not to work for free, if they want something they will for sure have something to offer in exchange, everybody has something to offer. The important thing is not always money, and it is definitely not a promise of promotion.
3- To strictly copy work of others in order to get what the client wants is not the important thing; to get inspiration from other artists; to rescue aesthetics and to absorb them and adapt them to your style is the important thing.
4- To have a plain idea and stick to it can be done by whoever, but to keep digging, to research and to expand your knowledge in several ways and disciplines is for the courageous ones. To be courageous is the important thing.
5- What you learnt in school is good, but it is not the important thing. As in life, each step has to be a journey of self-learning and self-exploration. Learn the canones and then adjust them, change them and deconstruct them in your search for the important thing..
6- To stop being a child is part of what it means to be an adult, if to be an adult means stop dreaming, stop imagining and losing your identity then to be an adult is for sure not the important thing.
7-To keep the inner child alive and let him have ideas is the important thing. Use your inner child and those ideas to help others to wake up from their lethargy. Create work to help people to fly, to dream, to travel, to escape from their prisons without bars.
8-Don’t isolate yourself from reality, embrace your context, your history and your time. Embrace the culture that surround you, hear what people have to say about themselves and your work. Let that knowledge and context be an important part of your work.
9- Storytelling is the oldest conversation of humanity, let the story be the important thing. make your work become a story, located in time and context. Never stop telling stories.
10- Feel proud of your work, it is a piece of your story. But don’t forget that the important thing is to share it and learn from other’s people stories, they have walked a long way too, they have a lot to tell. Collaborate and embrace other´s stories, get in their heads and listen to them.
11- The important thing is to be honest, authentic and true.
12- The important thing is not to forget what is the important thing. survive in the system , but do what you love and let the story have a happy ending.
Marta Zubieta 