This site is an assemblage of reproductions of myself in various forms. I like making things, seeing things, hearing things. I like playing and learning. Dancing between so many different interests, I've sometimes wondered if I've been wasting time on too many different projects instead of focusing only on the One Big Thing, (like the fox in Isaiah Berlin's famous analogy). It's a nice idea to have a broad range of interests and activities, though it can also come across as being undisciplined, untrained, and a little, erm, amateur...
I've never really liked the idea of "professionalism." To me it smacks of institution, entrapment, boredom. Remember Sartre's warning about the danger of becoming completely identified with your trade? Don't become a brand, man. Better to mix with the idiosyncratics, to side with the lovers; with the amateurs...
I wrote a manifesto about this quite a few years ago which, for reasons still not entirely clear, was translated into Turkish.
There's a version of it floating about over here: Mutable Sound. Three years earlier it appeared on the Kagablog, and then in the Laugh-it-Off Annual # 3 (2006). Here's a copy of its first print publication:
laugh_it_off_-_original_manifesto_of_amateurism_2003.pdf | |
File Size: | 312 kb |
File Type: |
And here's the Turkish version, from Sicak Nal 3 (2010), Turkish and South African Writers in Dialogue:
amatorizm_manifestu.pdf | |
File Size: | 95 kb |
File Type: |
And what the hey, lemme also just paste it here for those not keen on downloading things:
a manifesto of amateurism
preamble
...as everyone has by now, surely, become aware, the word "amateur"
arises from the holy name of amaterasu – the japanese goddess of the sun
born from the left eye of izanagi...
and it is to her that all true amateurists turn for benediction...
aligning the field: amateurism & professionalism
ONE
...every action (drama / karma) is a creative gesture,
because every action continuously creates consequences...
...if there is to be a division, then let it not fall between "bad" and "good"
or between "good" and "better"; but between action and non-action...
...amateurism is about action – praxis, rather than spectatorship...
so the first thing to do is to GET OUT OF THE GRANDSTAND...
TWO
...the crime of specialisation is that it inhibits and prevents people from acting,
because if only some can become masters, then the rest must become audience...
...professionalism thrives on expanding a passive audience...
so professionalism necessarily inhibits personal creative expression
by threatening the would-be amateurist’s enthusiasm and confidence...
THREE
...professionalism involves the deliberate commodification of creative produce...
...in its desire to maximise the distribution and consumability of creative products,
professionalism caters towards the mass production of objects most easily accessible
to the largest audience by means of the largest common denominator...
...the curse of professionalism is that it is inevitably group-driven and committee-sponsored,
that it defines humanity as swarm, as colony...
FOUR
...the amateurist is interested in singularity,
not in mass reproduction...
...in whichever plain the amateurist plays,
she always operates with total individual freedom...
...the amateurist manoeuvres with complete impunity towards
any notions of success which might be measurable in terms of quantity...
corollaries
a) amateur science
...since science became a profession at the tail end of the nineteenth century,
and as it became ever more professional during the course of the twentieth,
the value of the knowledge it contributes to society has become most important as a saleable commodity,
(a situation predicted by lyotard)...
consequently, common curiosity declines, and far too many have had their sense of wonder lobotomised...
the would-be amateurist scientist is now co-erced into aligning his interests with areas of research
which are most heavily subsidised by corporate funding...
so there's less encouragement of open, naive, guileless exploration of what is or might be...
b) amateur sports
...the professional sportsman seduces the would-be amateurist and hypnotises him
with symbolic victories and illusory triumphs, keeping him firmly fastened to his couch
while his belly bellows and his legs wither out from under him...
c) amateur arts
...when art becomes work, it stops being playful...
the professionalisation of the arts has also lead to the packaging of arts as a means and not an end,
which has managed to empty the artistic gesture itself of inherent value...
when art facilitates processes of reification and commoditisation, (or therapy, for that matter),
then it runs the risk of turning deadly – advertising, education, propaganda, pornography...
d) amateur music
...since the reproducibility of sound, domestic music making in the west has been all but silenced...
the domination of a network which feeds the market it has created for itself with carefully packaged stars
terrorizes the casual player into a mood of inadequacy...
but playing music and hearing it are different experiences...nobody can play like you...
e) amateur academics: the case for lazy scholarship
...if one is too career-orientated, if one is too much of a busybody,
if one has read too many books, if one has been too diligent,
then one is simply going to regurgitate the mechanisms of the apparatus into which one has willingly sunk one's self...
one will have become bound by one's books...
...thinking requires grandiloquent moments...
to be beavering away at facts and dates and entire branches of interpretations is stultifying...
for new ideas to breathe one needs the freedom to explore...
as nietzsche said – one cannot call oneself a thinker unless one spends at least
a third of one's time away from the company of people and books...
the bottom line
...the amateurist doesn't play the numbers game...
...the amateurist shuns the commodification of creativity...
...the amateurist never does anything he doesn't want to do...
...the amateurist is free...
who were the great amateurists?
...socrates, diogenes, spinoza, william blake, the marquis de sade, van gogh,
gerard manley hopkins, otto gross, aleister crowley, e.m. cioran, fernando pessoa,
antonin artaud, benjamin whorf, nikolai rimsky korsakov, henry green,
mayakovsky, the beats, harper lee, hakim bey, helen martins...
...long live amateur, long live...
a manifesto of amateurism
preamble
...as everyone has by now, surely, become aware, the word "amateur"
arises from the holy name of amaterasu – the japanese goddess of the sun
born from the left eye of izanagi...
and it is to her that all true amateurists turn for benediction...
aligning the field: amateurism & professionalism
ONE
...every action (drama / karma) is a creative gesture,
because every action continuously creates consequences...
...if there is to be a division, then let it not fall between "bad" and "good"
or between "good" and "better"; but between action and non-action...
...amateurism is about action – praxis, rather than spectatorship...
so the first thing to do is to GET OUT OF THE GRANDSTAND...
TWO
...the crime of specialisation is that it inhibits and prevents people from acting,
because if only some can become masters, then the rest must become audience...
...professionalism thrives on expanding a passive audience...
so professionalism necessarily inhibits personal creative expression
by threatening the would-be amateurist’s enthusiasm and confidence...
THREE
...professionalism involves the deliberate commodification of creative produce...
...in its desire to maximise the distribution and consumability of creative products,
professionalism caters towards the mass production of objects most easily accessible
to the largest audience by means of the largest common denominator...
...the curse of professionalism is that it is inevitably group-driven and committee-sponsored,
that it defines humanity as swarm, as colony...
FOUR
...the amateurist is interested in singularity,
not in mass reproduction...
...in whichever plain the amateurist plays,
she always operates with total individual freedom...
...the amateurist manoeuvres with complete impunity towards
any notions of success which might be measurable in terms of quantity...
corollaries
a) amateur science
...since science became a profession at the tail end of the nineteenth century,
and as it became ever more professional during the course of the twentieth,
the value of the knowledge it contributes to society has become most important as a saleable commodity,
(a situation predicted by lyotard)...
consequently, common curiosity declines, and far too many have had their sense of wonder lobotomised...
the would-be amateurist scientist is now co-erced into aligning his interests with areas of research
which are most heavily subsidised by corporate funding...
so there's less encouragement of open, naive, guileless exploration of what is or might be...
b) amateur sports
...the professional sportsman seduces the would-be amateurist and hypnotises him
with symbolic victories and illusory triumphs, keeping him firmly fastened to his couch
while his belly bellows and his legs wither out from under him...
c) amateur arts
...when art becomes work, it stops being playful...
the professionalisation of the arts has also lead to the packaging of arts as a means and not an end,
which has managed to empty the artistic gesture itself of inherent value...
when art facilitates processes of reification and commoditisation, (or therapy, for that matter),
then it runs the risk of turning deadly – advertising, education, propaganda, pornography...
d) amateur music
...since the reproducibility of sound, domestic music making in the west has been all but silenced...
the domination of a network which feeds the market it has created for itself with carefully packaged stars
terrorizes the casual player into a mood of inadequacy...
but playing music and hearing it are different experiences...nobody can play like you...
e) amateur academics: the case for lazy scholarship
...if one is too career-orientated, if one is too much of a busybody,
if one has read too many books, if one has been too diligent,
then one is simply going to regurgitate the mechanisms of the apparatus into which one has willingly sunk one's self...
one will have become bound by one's books...
...thinking requires grandiloquent moments...
to be beavering away at facts and dates and entire branches of interpretations is stultifying...
for new ideas to breathe one needs the freedom to explore...
as nietzsche said – one cannot call oneself a thinker unless one spends at least
a third of one's time away from the company of people and books...
the bottom line
...the amateurist doesn't play the numbers game...
...the amateurist shuns the commodification of creativity...
...the amateurist never does anything he doesn't want to do...
...the amateurist is free...
who were the great amateurists?
...socrates, diogenes, spinoza, william blake, the marquis de sade, van gogh,
gerard manley hopkins, otto gross, aleister crowley, e.m. cioran, fernando pessoa,
antonin artaud, benjamin whorf, nikolai rimsky korsakov, henry green,
mayakovsky, the beats, harper lee, hakim bey, helen martins...
...long live amateur, long live...