a nü flomm manifesto. because it’s time.

“But much of mod­ernism and its con­cerns now feel long ago, forged in a time of rapid in­dus­tri­al change when white Eu­ro­pean males as­sumed they ruled the world. The de­mands of our times call for some­thing else. And be­fore you ob­ject that we’ve been liv­ing for 50 years in post­mod­ernism, not mod­ernism, the art that fol­lowed the ti­tans of the ear­ly-20th cen­tu­ry was de­fined and even named af­ter what pre­ced­ed it (dad­dy is­sues?). What be­gan with Pop and Warhol looked like a break from mod­ernism, but it also ex­tend­ed modernism’s fetishiz­ing of nov­el­ty and a canon of icon­o­clasts. Mod­ernism is part of my life sto­ry, all of our life sto­ries, some­thing that shaped the ways we see the world and how the world sees itself.”
—Jer­ry Saltz, What the Hell Was Mod­ernism?, 2019

“The term is cor­rect: Mod­ern-ism. It is a po­et­ic re­flec­tion of The Mod­ern Age.”
—Niels Diffri­ent, The Ge­nius of De­sign Part 2, BBC 2010
 

Ear­li­er this year I carved out a lit­tle bit of time and start­ed writ­ing an up­dat­ed FLOMM Man­i­festo – be­cause our orig­i­nal one, while still in­ter­ac­tive, lives mor in tan­dem with our first project, our game.

It was a dif­fi­cult up­date based on a lot of life con­cepts I in­clude in the cours­es I teach. I even men­tioned I was strug­gling with it to RADíO FLoMM guest Au­tumn Sky Hall back in March.

Even­tu­al­ly, I re­cruit­ed the awe­some Thomas Allen Spencer, a.k.a. Tasé to read my re­al­ly messy third draft as a per­for­mance on our RADíO FLoMM [live] episode.

The night of the broad­cast, af­ter hav­ing his face paint­ed with ab­stract forms by Au­drey Daggett – while hold­ing Louis Hernandez’s Theo van Does­burg prop – Tasé found him­self blind­ed just enough by our ro­tat­ing vin­tage Christ­mas colour wheel that he couldn’t ac­tu­al­ly see a lot of wat he was reading. 

And this so called ‘mis­take’ re­sult­ed in some­thing beau­ti­ful, some­thing to­tal­ly FLOMM.
 

Just for the sake of argument 

Let’s say
If the FILM IN­DUS­TRY can re­boot su­per-he­roes year af­ter year
Every cou­ple of years they bring you a new one

You know there have been
57 BATMEN
13 SPIDER-MEN
And 4 or 5 HULKS

So if the FILM IN­DUS­TRY can re­boot their su­per-he­roes and we ac­cept that 

Why can we not RE­BOOT MODERN?

MOD­ERN is a dat­ed concept
Part of a sys­tem that al­lows his­to­ri­ans to place things on a shelf and or­der it as they would

BUT by its very na­ture MOD­ERN is NÜ
It should not be ORDINARY
It should not be REGULAR
It should not be MEAGER 

MOD­ERN means NEAR
NEAR be­ing NÜ and NÜ is AL­WAYS DIFFERENT

And in our
POST
POST
POST
POST
POST POST MOD­ERNISTIC SOCIETY
we have de­cid­ed to RE­CLAIM this MODERNISTIC
NÜ CON­CEPT and BRING it FORTH again

Be­cause CHANGE is NÜ
CHANGE is MODERN
CHANGE is OLD
CHANGE is DIFFERENT
CHANGE is THE SAME

And it re­quires AL­TER­ING our THINK­ING. It re­quires us to take the time –
I kno you don’t have the time
I don’t have the time
We’ve all got the time
but we don’t have the time
– take the TIME to re­order our THINKING
or to al­low our THINK­ING to move on the PATH that it needs to MOVE.

NOW you would say, how does it all fit together?
It doesn’t

NÜ is OLD
old is NÜ
UP is DOWN
DOWN is UP
It’s all one piece of the same
mov­ing in a di­rec­tion we’re not quite clear on

LEARN­ING
Ha! LEARNING
Wouldn’t we all ❤ to learn?
I think I’ve learned a few things

LEARN­ING is a part of it
BE­CAUSE we’ve got to learn to re­lease our­selves to move on to the NÜ
which is maybe the OLD RECONFIGURED
or maybe we just THOUGHT it was OLD
I am not sure

And we AL­TER these things as we go along and it seems just so,
so FAST
as sec­onds be­comes days be­comes weeks and years and we just – 

BUT it is just a MOMENT
and we are PASS­ING through this MOMENT

AND these mo­ments are gauged by WAT?
Time? Wat is that?
Light? Space?
The ro­ta­tions of the sil­ly lit­tle ball in the mid­dle of who knos where do­ing who knos wat
AND we put such val­ue in the TIME
AND not take the AC­TU­AL TIME and MAKE VAL­UE OF IT

We must be flexible
And pli­able. But there must be a bit of re­solve there too.

You aught nev­er be­lieve that we have SO MANY WAYS that we short ourselves
One of the best ex­cus­es is

Well, yeah, okay, so you didn’t.

So you’ll nev­er do it again maybe. 

BUT let’s move on with it
It’s an ex­cuse to al­low our­selves the lux­u­ry of sit­ting and wal­low­ing in our own
we’re just here and we’re do­ing this
we’re do­ing that and I can’t do that

It is not wat we need to do. We must move on.

PLI­A­BIL­I­TY will help us with that

Ha ha ha ha ha

Your EGO and your FEARS – they’ll guide you to your DEMISE

They’ll take you to the THE GREAT­EST MO­MENTS OF YOUR LIFE
but to your demise also

If you al­low the lit­tle dev­ils in your head – or an­gels if you will – saying
O don’t do this
O you can’t do that
O this that this that and the other

You will find your­self FALLING FURTHER
FUR­THER into the pit of
I CAN’T

I say  

You’re ca­pa­ble of ALL THINGS and ANY­THING THAT YOU CAN IMAGINE

AND we’ve ALL SET OURSELVES
FIRM
FOCUSED
and FORWARD
and GOT­TEN THINGS DONE

THAT’s JUST HOW we have to live AT ALL TIMES

SYS­TEMS in the WORLD would like to see you
off-kilter
off-balance
not believing
feel­ing small
feel­ing too large
and too great

That is not where we should go

There seems that we al­low this UN­RE­MARK­ABLE MINORITY
who seem to have the grasp of our lives
to guide
manipulate
control
and man­age it
WE MUST shake off that thought

We are ca­pa­ble of any­thing we want

Not
MAKE IT
BE IT
Let it be
It IS IN YOU

So
when you say
it’s post
it’s past
it’s this
it’s that
it’s not
Just do it®
We can
We can
We look around in this world and we say
I can
I can
I can
I can
I think wat we see is a re­flec­tion of wat we’ve de­cid­ed not to be or do.

We can be a GREAT DEAL BET­TER THAN THIS

And we must just grab our­self by the seat of our lit­tle pants – gen­tly of course

And
TAKE the BEAUTY
that is OUT THERE
in the MIS­TAKES THAT YOU MAKE
TAKE the BEAUTY
in the UN­EX­PECT­ED THINGS THAT COME ABOUT
TAKE the BEAUTY
in all LIFE

AND EX­PECT the NÜ
EX­PECT the UNEXPECTED
EX­PECT the MODeRN
Make it your LIFE NOW forevermor

LIVE BE­YOND YOUR FEARS
be­cause obviously
if we FEAR TOO MUCH
we’re a lit­tle bound up

And
AL­WAYS BE NÜ
from now FORWARD

‘I’VE NEV­ER DONE THAT BEFORE’
is an excuse
Used to es­cape CHANGE and WAL­LOW in THE PER­CEIVED SAFE­TY OF MEDIOCRITY

Your own EGO and FEARS will stop you from MOV­ING FORWARD
Do not let them get in the way

YOU ARE CA­PA­BLE of
THINGS BE­YOND YOUR IMAGINATION

Sys­tems in the WORLD right now are a to­tal disaster
re­ward­ing the EGOS and FEARS of
a pow­er­ful few who can­not let go of their sys­temic constructs
Who im­pose their con­structs on all of us. 

This un­re­mark­able mi­nor­i­ty gets to de­cide who lives, dies, who gets to labour long hours in Their Name and who gets placed in cages for be­ing at the wrong place
wrong time

We can be so much bet­ter than this

There is BEAU­TY in MISTAKES
There is BEAU­TY in the UNEXPECTED
UN­EX­PECT­ED is al­ways NÜ
Be­yond FEAR.
Al­ways MODeRN.
 
 
 

Hear Tasé’ per­for­mance at 46:45 here.
 

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM! Fo­tos by Milk Sur­face.

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