Neoism

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Neoism is a parody ism . It is the name of a subcultural network of artistic actionists and media experimenters and, in a more general sense, also stands for a practical underground philosophy. Neoism works with collective pseudonyms and identities, strokes and irritations, paradoxes, plagiarism and forgeries. He coined numerous contradicting definitions of himself in order to evade classification and historicization.

background

There are no generally accepted definitions of neoism and neoist activities. Divisions within the neoist network resulted in very different representations of neoism and its history. Best known is the schism between the author Stewart Home and the rest of the neoist network, which is also reflected in the neoist version of Home's books in contrast to various neoist resources on the Internet.

In non-neoist terminology, neoism could be called an international subculture, which in its beginnings resembled experimental art (such as Dada , surrealism , Fluxus and conceptual art ), punk culture , industrial and electropop music, political and religious free-thinker movements, and science fiction literature , Pataphysics and speculative science , but at the same time rejected such lines of tradition. Neoists also came from the field of graffiti and street art, L = A = N = G = U = A = G = E poetry, experimental film and video , mail art , the early Church of the SubGenius and gay and lesbian Culture. Neoism later shifted from an active subculture to a self-composed modern myth . As a side effect of this, many subcultural, artistic and political groups have referred to Neoism, often only vaguely, since the late 1980s, thereby perpetuating its myth .

history

precursor

The English word Neoism was coined in 1914 by the American satirist Franklin P. Adams as a parody of modern art. It appears as the name of a planet in the 1977 short story No Way Back by British science fiction writer Sydney J. Bounds .

In 1977 the artist and actionist David Zack invented the multiple artist identity Monty Cantsin and invited the Latvian-born poet and singer Maris Kundzins and the performance and video artist Istvan Kantor , who later emigrated from Hungary, to use it together. In the artist community "Portland Academy" in Portland (Oregon) around Zack, Kantor, Al Ackerman and Thomas "Musicmaster" Cassidy as well as members of the music collective Smegma, in 1973 the name ISM was used ironically for their own artistic work in addition to Monty Cantsin . In 1979, under the influence of Portland women's post-punk band The Neo Boys, ISM was transformed into "Neoism".

Neoist network

With Kantor's move to Montreal ( Canada ) in 1979, Neoism and the Monty Cantsin identity were further developed into a local and later international network. Neoism tied in with the Mail Art currents , which were not about the exchange of art objects, but about the art of living, pranks, irritating humor and experiments with pseudonyms and identity, such as those carried out by Kantor's mentors at the Portland Academy. According to Kantor, neoism simply describes something that is constantly reinventing itself and - similar to the multiple name Monty Cantsin - can relate to completely different actors, practices and aesthetics over time. At the beginning, Neoism stood for the activities of Kantor's Montreal network of young subculture and post-punk actionists, comparable and similar. a. with the Geniale Dilletanten in West Berlin . Until the late 1980s, Neoist activities concentrated on apartment festivals , which took place in private apartments, following the example of Eastern European underground art imported by immigrants such as Kantor, Balint Szombathy, Gabor Tóth and Boris Wanowitch. The early Neoists had their most spectacular appearance with the "Neoist Occupation Week", declared to be the Apartment Festival, an illegal and confrontational day-and-night occupation of the Montreal art gallery Motivation 5 in October 1980. Neoism spread through Montreal through the Mail Art network known beyond. Already the third Montreal Apartment Festival in 1981 consisted of half participants from Baltimore ( USA ), who had established an anarchist subculture of experimental music, experimental film , performances, language experimental poetry, pataphysics and political activism there since the late 1970s and in the Result formed the second North American focus of Neoism. In 1982 the first European neoist festival took place in the Würzburg allotment garden by the painter Blalla W. Hallmann ; organized and documented with a self-published book by Peter Below.

The real number of active neoists is difficult to determine not only because of Monty Cantsin's collective identity, but also because, in addition to long-time activists, those involved in the festivals also temporarily saw themselves as neoists. Typical neoist slogans were "radical play" ("playfare") and "the great confusion". Neoist publications like the multiple fanzine SMILE should also embody confusion and radical play instead of merely describing it. Both the neoist festivals and neoist writings experimented with radical undermining of identity , bodies , media and the categories of property and truth . Unlike typical postmodern currents, this experiment was practical and therefore existential. For example, Monty Cantsin was not just a collective pseudonym or a mythical person, but an identity lived by neoists for real. In addition to the usual subcultural-artistic media such as fanzines, performance , Super-8 film and video , computer viruses , food ( chapati ), flaming steam irons and, as telepathic antennas , metal clothes hangers were also used for this purpose . With Thomas Pynchon , Neoism could be called an “ anarchist miracle” of an international network of eccentrics who worked together with often extreme intensity under the common identity of Monty Cantsin and Neoism.

Variants and influences on other subcultures and artists

Soon after its founding, various variants and individual forms of neoism were created. In the early 1980s, the Montreal and later Parisian neoist Reinhard U. Sevol proclaimed “anti-neoism”, which other neoists appropriated by declaring neoism to be a pure invention of anti-neoists. The Dutch neoist Arthur Berkoff formed the one-man movement "Neoism / Anti-Neoism / Pregroperativism". Al Ackerman declared himself a "Salmineoist" (after the film actor and singer Sal Mineo ). In 1994 Stewart Home founded the "Neoist Alliance" as an occult order of which he declared himself a master. 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 Vienna . a. the group Monochrome , but none of the neoists previously known and described in his book participated. In 2001 the first Neoist district congress in Düsseldorf-Mitte took place. In 2004 an international “Neoist Department Festival” took place in Berlin.

Well-known artists who took part in neoist festivals and projects include: a. the street art -Pionier Richard Hambleton , the underground filmmaker Jack Smith , robotics artist Bill Front, the concept artist Klaus Groh , as well as a model and actress Eugenie Vincent ( I Shot Andy Warhol ).

Neoist forms of play such as multiple names, plagiarism and pranks entered other subcultures, were often mistaken for neoism as such and mixed with situationist concepts. This includes the plagiarism and art strike 1990–1993 campaign of the late 1980s, initiated by Stewart Home shortly after leaving the neoist network, as well as plunderphonics music, the re-established "London Psychogeographical Association", the "Association of Autonomous Astronauts" , the Luther Blissett project, the Michael K project, the German communication guerrilla and, since the late 1990s, network artists like 0100101110101101.org. The “one-man artist group” Stiletto Studio, s presented a sub-as well as counter-cultural with their design prank “ Consumer's Rest ” lounge chair at the 9th Neoist Festival in Ponte Nossa and at the Festival of Plagiarism 1988 in Braunschweig motivated connection between neoistically determined aspects of cultural consumption criticism and design consumption-critical aspects of New German Design . She also carried out public relations work critical of media consumption on the aspect of interpassivity in neoist collaborations. Other artists who vaguely refer to Neoism are the English music group The KLF and the action artist couple Alexander Brener and Barbara Schurz . Since 2008, spokesmen for the Hedonist International have appeared under the name Monty Cantsin.

Well-known neoists and anti-neoists

  • Pete Horobin, Dundee , Scotland
  • Istvan Kantor , Montreal and Toronto
  • Florian Cramer, Berlin and Rotterdam
  • Georg Ladanyi, Berlin
  • Napoleon Moffat, Montreal
  • Reinhardt U. Sevol, Montreal and Paris
  • Stiletto, Berlin
  • Via Vidorae, Montreal
  • Boris Wanowitch, Montreal
  • David Zack, Portland and Mexico
  • Gordon W. , Toronto and Berlin

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Oliver Marchart (1997): "Neo-Dadaistischer Retro-Futurismus" or: How Stewart Home invented the avant-garde on collecting point. Electronically archived theory , Internet Archive -Memento of January 14, 2017
  2. ↑ Franklin P. Adams, 'The Neo-Neoism', in: ders., By and Large, Doubleday 1914, p. 82, facsimile on archive.org
  3. ↑ Philip Harbottle (Ed.): The Best of Sydney J. Bounds, vol. 2: The Wayward Ship and other stories. Cosmos Books, 2003, ISBN 1-58715-517-6 , p. 190, [1]
  4. ↑ "This Monty Cantsin character is a blank legend - could sing Hungarian as well as Latvian - if you need a name try Monty Cantsin", November 9, 1977, after Istvan Kantor, The Origin of Monty Cantsin
  5. ↑ Michael Crane, Mary Stofflet (ed.), Correspondence Art, San Francisco: Contemporary Art Press, 1984, reproduction of the record cover of "Monty Cantsin's ISM Street Myth Blues Band" (1978) on p. 113
  6. ↑ Source material in the documentary "Nortwest Passage: The Birth of Portland's DIY Culture" made by Smegma member Mike Lastra, DVD: Culture Image, 2007.
  7. ↑ Oliver Marchart, Neoismus, Edition Selene, Vienna, 1997, p. 16
  8. ↑ Géza Perneczky, The Magazine Network, Edition Soft Geometry, Cologne, 1993, p. 157, as well as an interview with Istvan Kantor in Kinokaze # 2, 1993, p. 17, partly also cited in Stephen Perkins, Neoist Interruptus and the Collapse of Originality , University of Iowa, 2005, p. 1, PDF
  9. ↑ Perneczky, p. 157
  10. ↑ Perneczky, p. 160; Stewart Home, The Assault on Culture, Aporia Press, London 1988, pp. 87ff.
  11. ↑ Home, p. 88
  12. ↑ Perneczky, p. 159f.
  13. ↑ Home, p. 89
  14. ↑ http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book1982Wurzburg.html
  15. ↑ a b tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE on the neoist interpassivity project TV Hospital , 1994, Akademie der Künste , Berlin, with the sentence "ATTENTION: YOU ARE ENTERING A ZONE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PLAYFARE!" was given a striking warning; Project descriptions 177 to 183 ff Seven by Nine Squares homepage
  16. ↑ Marchart, p. 50f.
  17. ^ Tilman Baumgärtel, Experimental Software, Telepolis, November 17, 2001, [2]
  18. ↑ Marchart, p. 21
  19. ^ Neoist Concert from 1986
  20. ↑ Kunstforum International , Kunstperiodikum, Vol. 82, 1986, Das deutsche Avantgarde-Design - Möbel, Mode, Kunst und Kunstgewerbe , Ed .: Christian Borngräber, pp. 130-143 (chapter "Stiletto")
  21. ↑ Birgit Richard: Subcultural style versus “lifestyle” in design. On the complex interweaving of youth aesthetics and design , pp. 74ff - 84ff [here in particular explanations and images on: "New German Gemütlichkeit" by Stiletto] in Stefan Lengyel and Hermann Sturm: Design Schnittpunkt Essen / Design Lines Meet in Essen , (Text: de / en), Verlag Ernst & Sohn, Berlin, 1990, ISBN 3-433-02539-8 (text document online )
  22. ↑ Stewart Home on Stiletto's lecture performance workshop stealing and copying as the highest form of creativity in the fight against design at the Festival of Plagiarism at the Braunschweig University of Art from June 8th to 10th, 1988
  23. ↑ a b tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE on neoist interpassivity and Florian Cramer's relationship to neoism in a book review of Florian Cramer's book “Anti-Media” http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book2013Anti-Media.html
  24. ↑ Ask Dr. Ackerman http://www.thing.de/projekte/7:9%23/ack_index_index.html

literature

Web links