as part of the Anonymous #1 group show
@Temporary Art Center (TAC) Eindhoven, 2024
photo credit: Ursa Prek

ANONYMOUS MANIFESTO

Text and Performance,
2024


This manifesto advocates for anonymity as a strategic and experimental approach, highlighting artworks as autonomous entities with complex material dynamics, independent of their creators. It explores the potential of decentralized art practices, diverging from the traditional artist-centric paradigms.



1.
Anonymity signifies a move towards liberation, allowing artworks to transcend the confines of the artist’s intention. They exist as independent entities, subject to objective inspection, criticism, and diverse interpretations.

2.
By directing focus to the artwork itself, anonymity accentuates the power of medium and materiality.

3.
Anonymity blurs the lines between the artist’s intention and the influence of non-human agencies within artworks. Material resistance, automated processes, unforeseen events, AI generations… display creative tendencies that are not exclusive to humans.

4.
In this ambiguous amalgamation, artists are akin to materials, embodied by decisions, actions, labor, language, and more.

5.
Anonymity foreshadows the inevitable relinquishment of authorial rights. In the current technologically dominated environment, tools largely determine artistic expression, surpassing the artist's personal identity and creative trajectory.

6.
The infiltration of technology and its subtle influence on consciousness, dissolves independent subjectivity, rendering the idea of a single author obsolete.  An artwork is an assemblage. So is an artist.

7.
Anonymity is plural, collective. Anonymous artwork transcends individual perceptions and becomes a broader cultural expression, reflecting shared social experiences and underlying realities.

8.
In a post-human context, anonymity serves as a deliberate attempt to decentralize the supreme human authorship in artistic practice. It challenges established power hierarchies and the conventional notion of human-centric creativity.

9.
The extensive adoption of anonymity as a strategy for a paradigm shift could radically alter the existing value system of the art market.

10.
Anonymity opens a gap between the artwork and its meaning, a void to be filled by the viewer's imagination. The artwork thus becomes a new point of departure, rather than closure.