Manifesto Assignment
  
   

Models / Samples:

  
   
The Assignment  

Compose your own 1000-word manifesto, expressing the aims, goals, desires, and angers of your artistic and creative moment. As a manifesto, it must be particular to the time in which it is written (now, or next week). It must make outrageous and extravagent claims which you will later disown. It must express comtempt or disgust, as well as passion and excitement. It must use active, powerful verbs, shameless nouns, incandescent adjectives and adverbs.

You don't care what the world thinks because you are trying to change the world.

  
   

Generally, manifestos have three parts, though the length of each is variable:

  • Introductory section of poetic prose, which declares the context of the manifesto. Such a powerful declaration must arise from a specific place and time. The description of the place and time should itself serve as a model of the kind of art you are calling for. This section should also identify, in strong terms, that which you are against, and exactly why. Exaggerate the faults of your enemies, and proclaim the necessity of change.

  • List of criteria for your art
    • demands
    • rules and guiding principles
    • condemnations

  • Concluding statement explaining, for example, how the world will be better after your ideas have been implemented. Or perhaps simply urging others to join with you.
  
   
Of these three, the list is perhaps the most important, although the introductory section is often the most artfully written. It is also important that your maifesto demonstrate the principles it calls for. A manifesto doesn't simply define a movement, it calls it into being  

 
 
© lesley smith and dean taciuch
fall 2002
new century college & the department of english
in the
college of arts and sciences
george mason university
last updated: 28 october, 2002