Oh no, you shouldn’t be, not skimpering across obvious lines: this is the heaviest place to have me, under the sun, toasting like an almond. Wouldn’t it be so Mayakovsky of me to speed Future into loving you America, but you must go?
Future, future! Exactly the movement we needed, the right kind of trampling. Postmodernism killed the revolutionary, made us culture-obsessed, popularity obsessed, drowning in Marilyn Monroe. We’re sick of it, the New-Contemporary Person has the bronzing of turmoil over their eyes, because the sun is easier to forgive than a bastard institution.
Down with the discourse on originality, on irony, on the fear of metanarratives. We must have epic poems about activists, or else, how else are they supposed to become legends? We must paint their dreams, and put them on Broadway, and let them decide what the revolution looks like. Otherwise our kids might think that insurgency looks like Peter Doig…
We need a Black Lives Matter aesthetic, an LGBT rhyme-scheme, an immigrant opera style; Otherwise, the revolution will always be political, while our culture continues to write in the Jeff Koons and Damien Hirsts into the textbooks of posterity. We can’t just have laws, we must have myths for the revolution to stick.
FIRST we must end the cynical idea that one must either be entirely original, or painfully obvious with appropriation. This pandemic has taught us that it is possible to share the same experience separately, anywhere in the world, and we don’t have to find new ways of saying it. Our voices are stronger when amplified, and we need to see a pig eating a dove painted a thousand times more than a man with an umbrella on a clear day.
SECOND we must legitimize artists' collectives and create more of them. Artists and writers must not be afraid to look up to each other, or intimidated when others wish to build on a style that they created. The only way to achieve a movement is communication, and if someone tells you oh man, I want to write just like you then you should teach them without fear. They will never write just like you, but they will write the way you do, and together you will be the Future.
THIRD we must align our politics to our art. This involves writing manifestos, explaining that I photograph this way because of democratic-socialism. You and all your people must be vocal, and educated, and in constant awareness of what the other is publishing. This way when your art ends up in a textbook it can’t be separated from the revolution, or the other way around. This way our kids will never idolize a $58 million blow up balloon dog, or a social media makeup brand. Art must be inseparable from politics, or else the culture will forget when the influencers regain the spotlight for their Dolls Kill ads.
This is the obvious line! That of galleries and auction houses, of pop songs about break ups, and of fashion brands that only make clothes. We are taking over streets not just to leave with marks on our foreheads, but to eliminate the celebrity, and make of the New-Contemporary Person one that actively creates its legends. No more TV presidents, rapist production houses, or leaked pedophilic black books listing hundreds of the world’s creators of culture!
We must demand that the activism of our time be legendary, not reduced to silk screens in five colors, or two-paragraph blurbs in Social Studies textbooks. We must not let those in charge obscure our need for a revolutionary culture.
We must let go of universality, which blankets us with false notions of safety, of easily digestible pop music, of shitty polka-dot paintings and homogenous Celine ads. We must expect more! We must do more!
We must build a cultural revolution, and end the long-overdue Postmodernism, and its famous-for-money celebrities that then go on to believe they can rule our nation! Future! This America must go! Future! Future!
6/15/2020 7:07PM