The Manifesto Manifesto, Or Issued Issuing
student megan cohen
writes a carefully disheveled response
to Richard Foreman's 'Ontological-Hysteric Manifesto I'

 

            Manifestos in the past have tried to make their "To"s manifest.  I do wish and do not wish to do this or that, to see this or that continue in the world.  A list of yeses or nos communicating the intents of an author through addition or elimination of concepts which are or are not acceptable as a part of their ideal ideas.  An oath before god and country and self and the smiling fat children of the future.  A manifesto says "You shall use commas, eat chicken, make your scenery believable.  You shall not wear chickens, eat scenery, or use fantastical commas."  A manifesto gives commandments for the work of the self and others.
            But, Ontological-Hysteric I is a private manifesto.   Seemingly distracted scribblings, like those taken at a lecture while the writer watches someone else speak.  A map of post-it notes stuck down with Krazy glue.  To resist the temptation to move the scratches around later and hide all his favorite parts that he is ashamed to admit that he likes, or for other reasons, Foreman etches his temporary scratches in stone.  Foreman is content to leave his manifesto as a messy roadkill splatter from the brain.  Foreman zips from thing to thing and leaves a trail of lingual carnage and arrows gory with pooled ink drawing attention to the page's negative space.
            A manifesto wants you to read it, then go forth and make its "To"s and "Not To"s manifest.  Manifesto is a noun that flaps in the wind after being taped to a wall.  But, Manifesto is also an intransitive verb meaning to "issue a manifesto."  To issue an issuing of an issuing, manifesto is a recursive verb.  Ontological-Hysteric I is an issuing seemingly without a plan, posed as an artifact of spontaneous thought rather than as a product of white-out and dictation and revision and painstaking consideration.  But, a system seems to be in place, a structure waiting to be pieced back together after the issuing has exploded.
            The spontaneity may be real, a seat-belt-less careen down the steep cliffs of Foreman's mind.  Or, the spontaneity may be false, a well-oiled rollercoaster, a gesture towards an ideal of honest messiness but in reality a polished piece made incomprehensible in order to gain attention.  Ontological-Hysteric I may be a pile of unexplored potentialities, or Ontological-Hysteric I may have been assembled and disassembled.  Either way, it is a pile of parts.
            Ontological-Hysteric I is a manifesto that leaves the writing to the reader.  Not a manifesto without self-revelation, but rather with the self revealed as opaque.  A jumble that doesn't refuse to be unpacked to obvious sense, but certainly discourages it.  By the time you understand it, it is re-made in your own image.

 

 

this is only for the sake of historical accuracy.