00 : Operational Handbook on Making Art: Before Commencing Operations

Before Commencing Operations

General notice to makers, meddlers, operators & other unauthorised persons.

There is no permission coming.

Good. We can stop waiting.

Purpose / singular

This handbook has one purpose: to get something out of your head, into the world, and moving.

Follow the instructions correctly and, by the end of the operation, you should have made something that did not exist before.

More importantly, somebody else might have seen it.

They might remember it.

They might photograph it.

Repost it.

Repeat it.

Misquote it.

Stick it somewhere.

Send it to somebody else.

Or make their own version.

Pass it on.

In favourable conditions you may achieve minor artistic notoriety.

You may acquire followers.

Somebody may call you important.

Somebody else may call you a dickhead.

Both indicate successful transmission.

Results cannot be guaranteed.

The Ashmouth Assembly accepts no responsibility for low engagement.

What can be guaranteed is considerably simpler:

You will have made something.

This is more significant than it sounds.

A great deal of creative energy is currently spent preparing to make things.

Researching equipment
Watching other people make things
Building portfolios
Writing statements
Developing strategies
Waiting for confidence
Waiting for money
Waiting for the correct moment
Waiting to be noticed
Waiting to be invited
Waiting for somebody, somewhere, to indicate that production may now commence
Waiting for permission

Enough.

You do not need somebody behind a desk deciding the thing you made is worth looking at.

You certainly do not need to stand in a white room drinking free wine while somebody with excellent glasses explains which objects in the room are important.

Occasionally the artist has even paid for the wall.

Prestige has many payment options.

None of this concerns us.

We have work to do.

Art is not a cathedral.It’s a fire in the alley.

Nobody appoints the flame.

It starts somewhere small.

Someone notices. Somebody comes closer. Somebody else carries word of it away.

With luck, something catches.

That is the basic operation described in this handbook.

First you make the thing.
Then you give it characteristics strong enough to survive outside you.
You learn what people remember. You repeat it. Distort it.
Build strange little structures around it.

You decide what not to explain.

You find routes through which it can travel.

Eventually, if you have done your job properly, parts of the work begin moving without you.

At this stage control becomes unreliable.

This is considered desirable.

Expected Operational Outcome

By completion of this handbook the operator should be capable of:

Making before feeling ready
Stealing without producing a boring copy
Identifying the thing worth repeating
Repeating it until it begins to mean something
Withholding information
Putting work into circulation
Allowing things to disappear
Using humour as a weapon against pomposity
Leaving space for other people to interfere
Losing control with reasonable dignity

Social media fame: Possible

Cultural immortality: Unconfirmed

The handbook does not require you to become a professional artist.

It does not particularly care whether you call yourself an artist at all.

It cares whether you make the thing.

A picture
A song
A photograph
A character
A zine
A strange website
A piece of clothing
A story
A symbol
A small object left somewhere it can be encountered
A photograph of that object returned to the digital world
One thing becoming another

The operation can begin anywhere.

The only serious mistake is believing there is an official starting point.

There isn’t.

Likewise, there is no approved final destination.

The work does not need to end in a gallery, a shop, a collection or underneath somebody’s carefully formatted biography.

It needs somewhere to go.

That might be ten people.

It might be ten thousand.

Scale is not the same thing as impact.

10,000

A post can be forgotten by thousands before breakfast.

A photocopied image can live in somebody’s bedroom for twenty years.

Nobody has yet invented a useful number for this. So we will not attempt to optimise it.

Instead, over the following ten documents, you will be instructed in theft, repetition, misdirection, unauthorised distribution, strategic disappearance, deliberate gaps, minor cultural sabotage, and the manufacture of things that may escape their maker entirely and may be destroyed.

Some instructions will contradict one another.

Good.

This handbook is not sacred.

It is equipment.

Use what works.

Damage what doesn’t.

Misunderstand it productively.

If these instructions ever become another set of rules preventing you from making something, ignore them immediately.

This is not a guide to understand art.
This is a guide to make it spread.

There is nothing else you need to know before beginning.

Something does not exist yet.

Your first job is to alter that situation.

CommenceProduction.