Download: Regenerate Art PDF 2010 (3,6 MB)
MANIFESTA
Our priorities can be counted on one hand:
1. Direct attitude in ambiguous situations
When everybody is afraid to judge anybody, we believe it is necessary to judge everybody, including ourself. Judging is like breathing, we all do it even though we might not be aware about it.
Most of the time we encounter complex, ambiguous situations in life where a direct position as an artist is not desired nor requested. Art is supposed to question reality, to reveal ‘complexities’ through carefully constructed research. Should an artwork take concrete action, speak out unpleasant truths or deliver apparently simple and direct answers to complex questions; then the artist has made a regrettable “faux-pas” which is rewarded by suspicion and dismission from the representatives of the more ‘progressive’ and ‘refined’ positions.
2. Being literal is a conceptual advantage
Artists are often Licking the Curator’s Ass but not many do it literally – at least not in public. Being literal is another way to make us experience the reality of language, collective imagination and culture. For us being literal means to translate thoughts and metaphors into a visual reality by speculating, associating, sometimes creating absurd contexts which expose us to shocks of reality. These experiences can also be seen as reality checks which help us see reality better through its’ paradoxes.
3. Humor is a weapon
By taking ourselves very seriously and doing the wrong thing we like to challenge ourselves, to make fools out of ourselves and to see how far we can go. We like to laugh about ourselves in advance because our jokes are delayed and our events are non-events: the real show seems to be constantly postponed but we can laugh again once everything is over. Everybody deserves a second chance to laugh and nobody should be considered a sacred cow.
4. Criticality is vital – everything else is an excuse for maintaining the power in place
Artists usually take symbolical action against power they are not depending on, power that is not able to bite back on the artist. We believe it is important to bite the hand that feeds us ” or rather the hand that maybe could have fed us if we would not have bitten it. Thus we are confronted with real power that affects us and our action against this power is not just symbolical but real action (and real reaction).
“When an artist tries to rebel against the iron logic of Power, he comes into conflict with principles to which he himself owes his existence as artist. And so his action against Power must lead to his own downfall. Of course, Power can be mocked for a certain time, but its’ revenge will not fail to appear.”*1
5. We will fight till the END
“Those who want to make Art, let them fight; and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to be Artists. The true Artist must know that the Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice can offer honor and fame in the eyes of posterity, but nothing in the present.”*2
*1. Adapted from: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 10 & 11
*2. Adapted from: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 11 & 3
ADAM BUDAK ON ONDREJ BRODY & KRISTOFER PAETAU IN WANTED WORKS:
Conceptual neo-dadaistic artistic couple which haunts for grotesque aspects of both institutionalized art world and the very phenomena of art production itself. Their strategy is obvious and almost embarrassing in its literacy and straightforwardness but apparently that is their strongest aspect. Their issues and targets are elemental as well: everyday ethics, not to say moral code booklets, become their source of subject-matterlike vocabulary. The investigation is always and first of all in regards to the psychology of behavior as influenced or provoked by the external aspects of life and politics. Oscillating between use and abuse, advanced manipulation and cold untouchable registration of absurd reality, their work is truly critical and sincere in its desire to uncover the pathologies and hidden normalcies of inter-human relations. Their actions are always well structured and the dramaturgy is almost perfect, precise and calculated, cold and emotionally disturbing, bold and vicious, thoroughly penetrating. It perhaps only needs to be more carefully balanced: the desired scandal properly used as a tool to emphasize a decay of certain values and their sudden corruption.