DIY MANIFESTO (1st DRAFT)

Manifesto of DIY counter culture as relevant to the artist/musician Shane Harrington.

Background of DIY counter culture.

DIY is a contemporary countercultural movement whose roots can be traced back to the Dadaist, Situationist and Punk movements. DIY can be practiced, both in a wider community and politics based sense, as well as on a personal level as a means of bypassing existing dominant ideologies within society. DIY has been facilitated by the advent of creative technology (e.g. editing and recording software, video camera and digital communication) becoming more widely available to the general public. As a result the means of distribution has been returned to the worker or creative.

What DIY is for the artist/musician Shane Harrington.

DIY is non-prescriptive by its very nature. As a result any attempt to construct a DIY manifesto might be viewed as paradoxical. However, this manifesto caters solely to my views and what DIY means to me. This, in itself may be viewed as an act of DIY.

1. DIY is a clever escape mechanism, social parachute and common sense injection that should be administered when there is a waft of oppression in the air.
2. DIY doesn’t think outside the box. The box isn’t an issue for DIY.
3. Do-It-Yourself.
4. ‘Don’t waste time doing things you hate.’
5. I think therefore I think I am: nothing is a given.
6. Fuck Health and Safety. The future is a concept we use to avoid being alive today.
7. DIY is trying to become lucid within the dream.
8. DIY is not a set of clothes.
9. DIY would like to associate itself with such ventures as ‘non-prescriptive suggestion’, ‘attempting to live in the moment’ and ‘the pursuit of a value system which places direct experience over money and societal responsibility e.g. getting a mortgage, owning a television etc.’
10. No one should feel obligated to jump on the DIY bandwagon. DIY is not Jesus.
11. DIY acknowledges Robert M. Pirsig’s theory of the Metaphysics of Quality. ‘For every fact there is infinity of hypotheses.’
12. DIY acknowledges eastern philosophy and ‘letting go’ just as it does John N. Greys theory of the illusion of progress i.e. ‘No political system will deliver man from that which binds him.’
13. DIY is a self-referential analytical framework situated in the determinist aesthetic criteria. This is present within the domain centralizing the permutative paradigm shifts in social interstice via epistemological praxis… No wait, its not.
14. So many definitions runs the risk of making the term do-it-yourself arbitrary.
15. Write-Your-Own-Manifesto

Artist Statement

Utilising the tools and philosophy of DIY, my work is a personal reaction to the world around me. Images, thoughts and emotions stemming from subjects such as music, peer community and relationships manifest themselves in the medium of art.

Having established my own aesthetic I work with a wide range of media including drawing, 3d work and video.