Manifesto on Autonomy by por Mohammad Abbasi

Manifesto on autonomy
by Mohammad Abbasi

1
Funding

Betray your funder. There is a political agenda in every financial support. Use a Trojan horse to infiltrate. Unless you tend to be a tool being used in either of these two global operations, driven by institutions of the Global North: to disconnect art from socio-political realities as an artist from the Global North, or to become a soldier of postcolonialism as an artist from the Global South.

2
Politics

Be aware not to mistake politically exotic art for politically effective art. Politically exotic art, created in the Global South, is always welcome in the Global North market and always contains these topics: human, women, LGBT+Q rights and freedom of speech and censorship. Though this support has nothing to do with rights and freedom. It is just offering a good feeling to audiences in the Global North about themselves. Like watching the “elephant man” in the cage and valuing the pleasure that you are not in his position.

Be aware, as an artist from the Global South, not to be exhibited in the contemporary human zoos curated by Global North festival directors/programmers/curators.

3
Publicization

Autonomy is unrealizable, unless you publicize the private by inviting the public into your private spaces to organize events and to recreate a fresh hemisphere inspired by your own desired qualities of encountering. Encountering in “public private” is free of interference from the funders/censors. This stands as the only way to autonomy.

4
Anonymity

Anonymity is an illusory claim. Anonymity brings power and government will never let us be anonymous. Government is the real anonymous.

5
Sanction and Censorship

Bypassing the censorship is an expired strategy.

In fact after many confrontations with the government, we entered a new state of relationship: “state of We know and they know that we know”.

In this state, we have nothing to hide from each other and bypassing the censorship consequently becomes playing with the censor’s rule. When they creatively censor without any traces, they are bypassing us too, and worse than that we accompany them in this denying. Today, the undeniable reality of life must be genuinely reflected in the art scenes. Without the interference of censorship/self-censorship.

Whereas, censorship in the Global North is happening in a different way, which should be called sanction. Every artist is free to talk about everything, but not everything is saleable. In a way, financial sources in the Global North execute sanctions on artists from the Global North.

Religious institutions are responsible for the censorship in the Global South art scene, while financial institutions are responsible for the sanction in the Global North art scene.

6
Preaching to the converted

Contemporary art today is preaching to the converted. There is a bubble of you. You create and you consume it yourselves. You all agree with you. No arguments. You only acknowledge your “contemporary” bubble-mates as people. In other words, the term PEOPLE in your political vocabulary, unconsciously refers to the ones within the bubble. You are preaching to the converted.