Manifesto Against Words
Words are not yet worthless, but they are worth less today than they were yesterday - and even less than the day before that. At the current rate of depreciation, in three to five years, words will have a negative net value. A net asset will become a net loss.
We must move pre-emptively against the cataclysm. In other words: cut our losses by cutting our words.
'Authenticity,' 'passion,' 'quality,' and 'commitment' are the words that would score highest in any word search in an advertising manual. The reasons for this cataclysm in words are not complicated and are familiar to us all. Words have led us to the only surviving ethic of the day: self-promotion. In the process, we have left no human place to be promoted to.
Whilst we still have words like 'scary' and 'think,' it may be scary to think of a world without words; but remember, words are just hollowed-out bricks for constructing empty rhetoric, like antimetabole. So, ask not what words can do for you, but what you can do for words: macerate them.
full text of Furst_Ori manifesto agianst words 2021
Introducing The Art of Shredding
Manifesto Against Words was printed on a large scale and then cut to mimic the aftermath of a paper shredder. We then taped it back together to reconstruct its legibility and presented it framed as an intentionally 'wounded' document.
Beneath the frame, we placed a plinth supporting an old dictionary. Beside it sat a paper shredder equipped with a receptacle handmade from iron and glass, bearing the transfer-printed title: 'Dictionary of Words that are Hard to Find.'
The public was invited to participate in the 'shredding.' We urged visitors to scour the dictionary for words they wished to vanish, tear out the page, and feed it into the machine. Obvious point, but as we exhibited this work in Spain, every element - from our manifesto to the dictionary pages - was in Spanish.
This activity of shredding transformed the pages of the normal dictionary, quite logically, into the: 'Dictionary of Words that are Hard to Find.' The installation thereby forms a part of a series of our works featuring invented dictionaries, both as physical installations - as in the Dictionary of Words that are Impossible to Focus - or imaginary and conceptual - as in the Dictionary Muto Proprio published in Carta óptima, by Farniente.
Debut - Galería Arrabal & Cía, Granada (2021)
The project had its first outing as part of our Furst_Ori exhibition 'The Shadow Behind the Words' (Las sombras detrás de las palabras). In the setting of a dedicated contemporary art gallery, the public embraced the concept with gusto. Within the 'white-cube' environment, the act of shredding words was treated as a liberation - perhaps as a performance of critical theory or conversely a performance critical of theory - and with genuine enthusiasm.
Sequel - Isla Negra, Málaga (2022)
The installation evolved in an unexpected direction in its second outing at Isla Negra, an extraordinary bookshop specializing in antique volumes and rare first editions. Here, the context radically altered the experience.
Surrounded by centuries of priceless bindings, the act of tearing a page from a book - even a common dictionary of near-zero financial value - seemed to have became an act of sacrilege. We noticed a palpable reluctance from the public to participate. During the period of the exhibition the staff reported that they actually had to encourage the public by demonstrating the shredding themselves, and even then, people seemed reticent.
The venue changed the psychological meaning in a radical way. In the gallery, we were destroying words, concepts - an activity people participated in with relish - in the bookshop, we were destroying The Book. By placing the shredder amongst the high value, rarities of Isla Negra, we could assert that words may be worth less today, but it was clear that reverence for the vessel remained - triumph of form over content: judging a books by its bindings - leading to a singular result: the Dictionary of Words that are Hard to Find barely grew in its journey from Granada to Malaga.
Rhetorical aside (only for the curious of mind) on rhetoric: the expression antimetabole used in the manifesto is the rhetorical device of repeating a phrase or sentence in reverse grammatical order. An example is the stately: 'Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country' ...and its rhetorically equivalent but less than stately... 'You can take the gorilla out of the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of the gorilla.' A useful palliative to the seductive effects of 'great' political orators is to substitute - in the mind's eye - a grave, and passionate JFK intoning the gorilla antimetabole in place of "Ask not what.....