You see, my journey into the Underworld of America gave me a new sense of urgency.
I had entered the Underworld to obtain solutions to problems afflicting humanity, to discover the roots of illnesses that eternally afflict the human soul.
Once I was back, I asked myself: where in Hell do I go from here!?
I was only then beginning to grasp the significance of my journey into the darkness.
Yet, one thing was clear, I must take the next step: the total embrace of the post reality.
I now realize that the post reality has become the only possible direction for my story, for in the post reality, there is no longer separation between that which is real and that which is not.
In the post reality, there is no longer separation between anything and anybody.
All things move in all directions: instantaneously and simultaneously.
This is the new world (dis)order.
In the post reality, the reality of the everyday is re-formed and replaced by virtual situations and infinite relationships.
It is where our dreams and aspirations have no borders, no boundaries, and no limits.
Yes! In the post reality, I can be anyone, anywhere.
I’ll go viral. I’ll penetrate the social media, or else as an artist, I’ll become ineffectual and irrelevant.
You see, the social media is the new medium of the post reality. And as the experience of art has always been a social experience, the artist is by definition a social media artist.
The social media will be my stage, the ultimate world stage, that non-place where revolutions are fought, war is waged, passions run wild, and the social hierarchy is reshuffled.
It is where individual expression is amplified on a global scale.
The social media moves at the speed of light, it is real-time.
In my total embrace of the post reality, I’ll become a super-participant, an echo chamber for appropriating, amplifying and redirecting information.
I’ll absorb the endless stream of mass media and popular culture to reshape them, transform them, remix them, and re-broadcast them back out from wherever they came.
The studio will be the point of origin, my mis-en-scene, my alchemical laboratory.
In the post reality, the studio is an open studio where the daily ritual of making art is conducted in front of and for the camera.
In the post reality, the open studio goes open source.
I’ll be a distributed artist, and my notebook a distributed notebook.
Journal entries containing my deepest and darkest thoughts will spread like wildfire through the network, the viral penetration of artistic expression reusable by anyone, anywhere, in any form.
My story will become a meta-story, spreading context/meaning/description to the information I capture/tag/replay.
Everything I make as an artist will be indexed for future retrieval.
The language of the social media is a computer language. I’ll speak in #hashtags and @usernames and abbreviated emoticons.
I’ll speak novels in 140 characters or less.
Information will flow in and out of my studio and in and out of me. My narrative will feed on user feedback: folded in, sampled and resampled, fed back through and out again. In the post reality, everything is captured and processed and remixed and connected and re-connected.
This manifesto is an open invitation to participate in the post reality – in the transformation of everyday life.
I guarantee it will be seductive: tantalizing, mysterious, and endlessly entertaining.
You’re all invited, for in the post reality, everyone belongs to everyone else.