Manifesto.

There's a ridiculous amount of them out there it seems. You could spend a lot of your life divulging in these morsels of food for thought. Here are are some I find interesting.

1. 'The Communist Manifesto' by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848). Famous for not working in practice but in theory has some interesting points. "WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!" The things this spawned are also intriguing to me, mainly the peoples republic of China and the 'red guard'. 
2. 'The Little Red Book' quotations from Mao Tse Tung. "In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites in the United States, it is only the reactionary ruling circles that oppress the black people. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people".
3. 'Stuckism' by Billy Childish and Charles Thompson (1999). 'Against conceptualism, hedonism and the cult of the ego artist'. Makes some interesting statements like 'the stuckist gives up the laborious task of playing games of novelty, shock and gimmick'. Other statements however I whole heartedly disagree with. 'Artists who don't paint aren't artists'.
4. 'The Turner Prize'. This is another manifesto written by the stuckists and again I both agree and disagree with different points. This one hits the nail on the head for me though. 'The only artist who wouldn't be in danger of winning the Turner prize is Turner'. 
5. 'Anti Design Festival Manifesto'. This is obviously a postmodernist design manifesto which is trying to inspire people to throw out the rule book for new creative possibilities. I'm not sure about all of it but some elements are interesting. However trying to read it directly from the website is just annoying, they've taken the leading right down into the negatives so that you can hardly make sense of it. Guess they were trying to be radical? Its like trying to make a point to a group of chinese people in punjabi. pointless. 

I will...

I will strive to create work both mentally and visually engaging.

I will aim to never claim I know it all. 

I will always keep an open mind but have my own informed opinions. 

I will always work for the good of people over the good of wealthy pockets. 

I will accept my flaws and learn from them. 

Joel Burden. 2012.