Assignment 5:
MANIFESTO

Final Pin-up on September 13
Digital Submission on September 15

“The French poet Tristan Tzara wrote in his 1918 Dadaist manifesto,  -– To launch a manifesto, you have to want: A, B, & C, and fulminate against 1, 2, & 3. – ” [1]  

Writing a Manifesto is choosing a stance, and while doing so delineating a clear border between one and other. Such a border is initially made by time, through our acknowledging of a particular present whose immediate consequences could lead to a moment of rupture in a not so far away future. A Manifesto then is an opportunity to fracture a timeline with hope, seeking a desirable foreseeable future through actionable ideas.

This week, Collage will become the tool through which we will navigate the borders that delineate our Future Space of Collective Learning, parting from the notion that “collage is both an artistic method and a philosophical approach, involving piecing together fragments and diverse elements to form a unified whole.” [2] Carving through everyday graphic materials, we will explore our subjective experiences through image seeking, transforming their meaning by shaping a series of artworks into the appearance and meaning of our Future Space of Collective Learning.

According to curator Yuval Etgar, collage can be seen as “a continuous process of challenging the borders” of creative expression, one that “comes into play in formal terms relating to scale, spatial orientation and material composition, but also in ideological terms where hierarchies – social or other – can be undermined or inverted, and margins are constantly pulled into the centre.”[3]

Through your manifesto, you should

• identify what needs repair in schools; what repair means for you; and what that repair might look and feel like. (Remember all of the scales of repair we talked about in the first week: what it means to repair object and things, structures, infrastructures, ecologies, institutions, relationships, narratives…)
• identify the focus of your Future Space of Collective Learning. (School of _____??)
• identify the primary future skills of this Future Space of Collective Learning
• identify your site(s)
• identify your community partner(s)

[1] Richard Buday, How to Write an Architectural Manifesto, https://www.archdaily.com/921760/how-to-write-an-architectural-manifesto , ArchDaily, 2019.

[2] Sally Barron, Lit Review on “Border Control: Testing the Limits of Collage” by Yuval Etgar, https://www.sallybarron.co.nz/blog/2024/6/18/lit-review-b

[3] Yuval Etgar, “Border Control: Testing the Limits of Collage”,Vitamin C+ Collage in Contemporary Art, 2023

DAY 1: Cut-out Manifesto Seeds

Using a variety of text material (ex. written material generated during the course, texts with which you have resonated, printed examples of manifestos, the notecards from the first day of class, etc.) plus the resulting text of today’s creative writing exercises, you will distill fragments into cut-out sentences and words to form a collaged text poem. This will become the seed of your manifesto.

• Deliverable: Analog Collage made up of texts.

DAY 2: Artifact from the Future

Following an overview of futures studies, design fiction, and speculative architecture, you will investigate and extrapolate signals from the present in order to invent a future. You’ll visit that future and bring back an artifact from it.

• Deliverable: A mid to high resolution artifact from the future. The artifact should be able to convey a story that reflects as much information from the future as possible.

DAY 3: Collage Manifesto - Preamble, Reactions & Principles

Transform the textual seeds of the manifesto and ongoing research into one to three analog collages that, using the graphic material available in class, illustrate the following:

• what this future space of collective learning might look or feel like
• embodiment/figure of a learner in this school
• embodiment/figure of a facilitator in this school

 

DAY 4: Voiced Manifesto

Analyze the seeds of your manifesto and the resulting collages. Write a text of a maximum of two pages seeking to verbalize what has been expressed through the collages and parallel research.

The written Manifesto should include:

1. Name of Future Space of Collective Learning
   
2. Context + Future that the School is situated in
3. Mission (Focus)
4. 5(+) Principles (must be related to the Mission/Focus)

• include key future skills to be cultivated 
  
• include site in relation to a principle
  
• include socio / partner in relation to a principle

5. ANNEX

• Any initial research on this focus that you have already done so far.
• References, resources, books that are relevant that you will use for research this weekend.

DAY 4: From Manifesto to Conceptual Diagrams

Using as a foundation the graphic and textual material generated around the manifesto, ground at least 5 preliminary conceptual diagrams for your Future Space for Learning. If in the process of doing so, you realize that the written or visual manifestos need to be edited, do so. Quick hand drawn sketches preferred for now.

• Initial sketchy concept diagrams of (choose at least 5)
• Diagram distribution of activities: ex. spaces of production, spaces of sharing, other spaces of learning, etc.
• Diagram distribution of departments/disciplines/programs
• Diagram relationships to urban context
• Diagram relationships to cultural/historical context
• Diagram the choreography of at least one spatial arrangement for learning, including relationships between actors
• Diagram institutional structure / Relationship to Formal Institution
• Diagram curriculum
• Diagram learning rhythms over time
• Diagram the design pedagogy of the future space of collective learning

DAY 5: Manifesto Declarations

See the below deliverables for the pin-up.

DELIVERABLE

• For Pin-up:
• Textual Collage from Day 1: Cut-out Manifesto Seeds.
• Future Artifact from Day 2.
• Visual Collage(s) from Day 3: Manifesto space/learners
• One or two pages Written Manifesto from Day 4.
• Be prepared to read part of this out loud as a declaration!
• Five initial hand-sketched concept diagrams from Day 4.
• For Digital Submission:
• Canvas: Compiled Ensemble with all of the above content! (PDF)
• Canvas: Photo of everything pinned up together at pin-up
  
• Arena: Day 3 Collage, Day 4 Written Manifesto, Day 4 diagrams, photo of pin-up

REFERENCES

• David J. Staley. Alternative Universities: Speculative Design for Innovation in Higher Education. Introduction. 2019.
• The Care Collective. The Care Manifesto. 2020.
• Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Manifesto for Maintenance Art. 1969.
• Huey P Newton and Bobby Seales. The Black Panthers: Ten Point Program. 1966.
• Charlotte Malterre-Barthes. Moratorium manifesto. 2022. [based on “Stop Building? A moratorium on new construction”. (shorter) + (longer).]
  
• Various authors, Collection of Architectural Manifestos.
• Various political manifestos, manifestos.net
• Ursula K. Le Guin. “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” 1986.
• Nicholas Nova & Anaïs Bloch. Dr. Smartphones: an ethnography of mobile phone repair shops. 2020.
• Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. 2013.
  
• Richard Buday, How to Write an Architectural Manifesto, ArchDaily, 2019.
• Sally Barron, Lit Review on “Border Control: Testing the Limits of Collage” by Yuval Etgar
• Yuval Etgar, “Border Control: Testing the Limits of Collage”, Vitamin C+ Collage in Contemporary Art, 2023
• Urban Intermedia: City, Archive, Narrative