UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF ART WAR
We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious
is the first duty of intelligent men.
—George Orwell
THE COYOTEL CORE hereby Declares ART WAR on Sanctioned Culture, Sanctioned Rebellion, Sanctioned Religion, Sanctioned Belief, Consensus Reality, Consensus Denial.
OUR ENEMIES are Boredom, Arbiters of Taste, Promoters of Pablum, Advertisers of Mediocrity, Soulless Religions, Axis of Weasels, Flakes, Hangers-On, Time Wasters.
WE HEREBY DECLARE Our Enemies Dismissed and Ignored.
IN DECLARING ART WAR the COYOTEL CORE aims to Liberate Awareness, Anticipate Change, Unflinchingly Promote our Ideals, Liberty, Creativity, Humor.
BY SIGNING BELOW we pledge our hearts, spirits, and time to the formation of Creative Cultures, Authenticity of Being, Genuine Individuality, Passionate Interactions with Life.
HOW WILL YOU contribute to the Goals, Drive and Ambitions of ART WAR?
Coyotel Literary Aesthetics &
Coyotel TRUE ART Visual Aesthetics
http://www.coyotelpress.com/Aesthetics.html
Signed,
Steven Johnson Leyba
“NEVER FEAR TO ASK WHAT IS ART? AND WHAT IS TRUE ART”
Author of “The Last American Painter”
"I WILL CONTINUE TO DO TASTY ART... NOT TASTEFUL ART! "
Frank Moore
Will Taylor
Author of “The Pollen Road”
“Mark it well”
Dave Archer
Author of “Survival Art; Painting and Sculpting for Food, Clothing and Shelter”
Gigi Deluxe
DO NOT TELL ME "I prefer your work when it isn't too overtly sexual/violent"
LIKE IT'S A COMPLIMENT. IT'S NOT. IT'S AN INSULT. I AM OVERTLY SEXUAL AND I AM VIOLENT. I DON'T WATER DOWN MY ART OR MYSELF FOR NO ONE BUT ME
Jerry Barksdale
www.empyreanasunder.com and www.myspace.com/eroxthis
“We as artists have become an uninspiring collective. Stagnate in our ideals and presentation we continually attempt to pass off rehashed garbage as an act of creation. Creativity is dead and the artist is to blame. We’ve allowed every jackass with an instrument, a paintbrush, a camera, or a canvas to call themselves an artist. Our title has been usurped by mediocrity. We’ve catered to an undeserving, disinterested mass. We’ve became inclusive rather then exclusive. The average spectator feels just as much an artist as the master painter. Our works have been reduced to wholesale. Something readily discarded. To call myself an artist has become embarrassing…this title is an insult.
We have built ourselves a pedestal, as artists are a narcissistic people. We errantly parade ourselves as architects of emotion. Our way of life has became a sought after illusion. In an attempt to glorify our position as artist we’ve mangled the very term. Groveling for acceptance from the masses we cling to the latest ideas and trends losing sight of our one true goal….to reach deep within our humanity and pull out a piece of ourselves that others are unwilling or incapable of seeing within themselves. The artist acts neither as catalyst nor as architect. We are simply a candle in the darkness, exposing those small pieces of human nature rather left buried.
To those of us truly inspired: are we even aware of our job as an artist? Is it to promote our brand, to hand out fliers and peddle our merchandise like some fucking street vendor? Is it the accumulation of fan and status that inspires us to create? This is what we have been reduced to; this is the New Way of art.
In a culture of complacency and inaction we are encouraged to accept this New Way. We have become puppets of corporation, tools of their mass marketing schemes. We should rid these ills from our conscience and once again reach deep within and reclaim our title as “artist”. This is the Art War to me. An attempt to reclaim art as art rather then a piece of readily discardable merchandise.
The artist should be confrontational, aggressive and explicit. Our art should expose our deepest secrets, destroy social convention and should encourage others to question themselves. It should be obscure and occult; it should be hidden from the passerby. Art should be embarrassing; it should mirror our desires, mirror our disgusts, mirror our fears, and mirror our insecurities. If our art does not these things then it is nothing more than social mimicry and we, the artist, have failed.”
Marissa Raine Miller
“To be human is to be an artist and we procrastinate because we're afraid of achieving our full potential because to do so is very hard and requires much failure.”
Decoy
“Subvert the converted”
Mike Hammarberg
“Art Militia hereby declare Art War on everything!
In a time where we as artists should lean back and just take all the shit they're shoveling we rise. We rise above the religious dogmas, poltical harlotry and the view of what art should be, and we aim to destroy it all.
We must never settle for being inside the frames, always push outwards and rip the frames apart. If people ask for nature-art we give them industrial. If people ask for fucked up expressionism we will give them minimalistic colorfields. If people ask for a watercolor-painting we paint with coal and blood. We must always paint what we are and feel, never ever what anyone else wants. We will take back the word ARTIST from all those who claim it these days. We will bleed our innermost feelings out on canvas, wood, glass, walls or whatever is available. We are also to blame for letting us be bought, letting us give up control of our work.
The same second we stop giving our most in our art, they have won.
People may think this is a joke, but it is WAR. A war on boredom, on people telling us what is and isn't "tasteful" or beautiful, or the view on what art is. We as artist must reclaim the word and make it meaningful again.
Art is what we breathe, and it's the blood that keeps pumping through our veins. It's just not "something you do in your sparetime", it never was just a hobby. For us Art Warriors it is and always will be so much more.
When you breathe, bleed, cry, laugh, work for something it's worth fighting for, living for and even dying for. This ART WAR is now, today, tomorrow and always.”
Elija Van den berg
“…Amongst the younger people this might be the case, anyway, you have to encourage yourself, YOU have to change what is happening...
not so much with some of the people from my own generation, i just look at Max Lerou, the poetry slam organiser (56) Q 65 guys (both 65), armand, dutch protest singer (63) Nicko Christiansen (59) his base player Jeroen, who is around the same age and who has dropped out of forced registration and ID, terminated his TV subscription etc. Marcellus a painter from Rotterdam who has done same, Ben van Es galley owner who shows renegades, my friend Gary here in England who paints peaceful pictures with gunpowder (VERY creative!!! needs a special license for the gunpowder.) What a statement!!! None of them particularly blessed in the looks department, none of them interested in money and/or fame. Art is there to make people think, to give them pleasure, as a meeting place for likeminded people, well you know me, I am a peace freak hippy, WARS NEVER solve anything, they just kill lots of innocent people, mostly women and children - they do not ever matter anyway, only rich men (Rich mans war, John Trudell) - who are usually brown. Or black. Or Muslims, or all three. I try not to mind too much what happens to me and more what happens to this society. I try and stay creative. And positive. Not easy when you are homeless half the time and ill.”
Mark Powell
I am truly honored to have had some influence on the Coyotel aesthetics. It is truly important work you are doing, I am inspired. I must make special note of the Declaration of War on the eye of the beholder. Something I have argued recently. This neither here nor there attitude of all art is in the eye of the beholder, it is all ultimately subjective and that art cannot not be measured, NONSENSE!! I say.
Of course standards exist and one strives to meet those standards.
Another problem is the question of work, which many of the so called slacker artists and video artists and lay-abouts who probably do not come from working class families, who, thanks to their privileged circumstances are able to worm their way into galleries and publications and not do any real work, for them art need not require any real effort.
I have seen for example an artist video themselves lying in a bath tub and submit it as art. This actually got onto a television arts program. Well for a person who has had to work in factories, warehouses, unloading shipping containers and sifting through shit (literally) at a recycling plant, I understand the importance of work, art requires effort. It also goes to those who believe an artist is someone who can just point at something and it becomes art. This seems to exist elsewhere in our culture too, celebrities these days do not have to actually DO anything, they just are. There is a class of people who have enabled the least among us to rise to the top. We should look to Levi's illustration of Baphomet where the hands represent the sacredness of work and the flame of the imagination burns brightly above.
Allen
And as for ART WAR, I will contribute by continuing to make art that is true to myself.
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