Artist manifestos were first written and performed in the early 20th century. Vocalist Loré Lixenberg, laptop artist Federico Reuben and Aleks Kolkowski on wax cylinders and horns bring the texts alive musically, highlighting their ground-breaking and often astonishing nature. Initially playful, provocative and radical reactions to the art establishment of the time, manifesti in later years often featured anti-war propaganda. All manifesti and works featured in MANIFESTO have had a profound influence on music as well as art and can be seen as the early foundations of the performance art and sound art forms we are familiar with today.

The texts range from Marinetti’s Futurism Manifesto (1909) to George Maciunas’ Fluxus Manifesto (1963). A pop-up exhibition of rarely seen and exciting artifacts including original manifesto tracts and scores, sound poems and photographs as well as artworks by the manifesto authors is shown alongside the performance. The exhibition is curated by internationally acclaimed curator and composer Frederic Acquaviva and designed to be discovered before, during and after the performance. Following on from the project’s first outing at King’s Place in March 2013, we are aiming to tour MANIFESTO to higher education institutions with public-facing performance and/or art programmes, from November 2013.

MANIFESTO is an essential experience for any student studying the 20th century avant-garde and its effect on culture, music, art and politics.

Performances took place at:

Falmouth, 25 October 2014

Oxford , 7 November 2014

Manchester, 23 February 2014

With thanks to Sound and Music, which have provided funding for this project through their touring programme.