Manifesto
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THE OBJECT:PARADISE
MANIFESTO
OBJECT:PARADISE aims to highlight the subjective experience of poetry in an objective, shared moment of time and space.
We do this by taking the spotlight off the ‘poet’ and placing it rather on the context of shared time & space where the language exists--and thus happens.
This approach alleviates the pretensions often associated with the connotation of “poetry reading” where both readers and audience members may be burdened with social perceptions of ‘poetry’, ‘poems’, and ‘poets’.
We embrace the surrounding noise—whether visual, auditory, or physical—and plan simultaneous actions during readings, so that unplanned actions (real disruptions) are not seen as distractions, but as integral parts of our subjective experiences.
Our objective is that when people leave our curated events, they become more attuned to their surroundings—actively and inductively engaging with the poetics of the natural world, asking themselves, "Is this a poetry reading?"
The Manifesto was written by Tyko Say, Sandra Pasławska, Jaromir Lelek, and Roksan Mandel in Žižkov, Prague, Czech Republic 2020. Our founding document (below) is composed of twenty mantras which inform all actions, projects, and curations by the OBJECT:PARADISE collective.
The role of collective members is to ensure that all artifacts from OBJECT:PARADISE prescribe to the Manifesto in part or in whole.
The collective is currently managed by Tyko Say, Sandra Pasławska, and Jaromír Lelek.
Photo by Hunter Andrews.
Read our founding document below
The only thing that is constant is change; a single moment can never be replicated again. OBJECT:PARADISE applies this notion to language to celebrate the innate uniqueness of utterances happening in a single time and space-specific context.Because language is always happening for the first time, we aim to release it from its intention and foster a space where it can exist as its implication. To do this, we encourage the language user—producer and receiver, performer and audience—to embrace miscommunication to observe how connotative forces shape shared experience and understanding of the languages before them.
When we erase the restraints of denotation, the superego of language, we find that we cannot produce poetry, but only receive it as it happens for the first time before us in the objective moment.
What is the objective moment?
Along with sharing a moment in time, comes the space where that time happens. It is often that at poetry readings there is a prescriptive space--meaning that the attendees of the event have prescriptive roles they must fulfill in order for the reading to achieve its intention: the poet stands before an audience (often in a turtleneck), and the audience listens (often with their hands crossed on their knee). If this act is not fulfilled, then one of two reasons are likely given:- The audience does not understand the language of the poet; or
- The poet does not understand the language of the audience.
In both incidents, language is the enemy. This raises the core question, “is there a perfect poetic language, a language which embodies the correct amount of ambiguity and directness to be deemed poetic verse?”, but the answer is simple if we view language from a social perspective: language is not biological; or from the physics perspective: language is always changing. There is no one best word nor best order of the best words, only social perception, and trends that make language knowable or hip.
So if language can’t be objectively qualified as good or bad, then what would make it poetic in the first place? What would send chills down the spine and raise the hairs of our moles? We will argue that meaning is derived from context: time and space. This is clear when we think about our language choices; why is it that we can read the same poem at both a wedding and a funeral? Did the speaker really see two paths diverged in a wood? And what does that choice mean when taking a hand in marriage versus a hand in the casket?
It is only evident that because language relies on context to give it meaning, then poetry must as well. At poetry performances, the attendee share only one thing: that moment, which constitutes time, space, and the actions before them. This time and space-specific context creates new forces on what the language once was, and in turn, forces intended denotation into implicated connotation. Language then begins to happen—it exists in the moment—and is always new if we accept, understand, and explore the pragmatics of the utterances before us.
How do we celebrate a language happening?
To celebrate a language happening is to open up our senses to everything occurring in the objective moment: sound, action, language, and physical space. Again, the poetry reading at the wedding and at the funeral taste different.
With some orchestrated performances of sound, action, and language, unorchestrated happenings begin to be highlighted--the man spilling an entire pint on his KROTCH: is that part of the performance? Of course it is. It must be; it has to be.
It is when everyone who is part of the objective moment begins to ask themselves these questions we can see a true rejection of the “poet” providing meaning, but the moment itself and all of its chaos providing meaning. It is when this happens, we know we have provided a context for the subjective world to be experienced in the objective moment.
︎Manifesto Mantras︎
OBJECT:PARADISE IS THE INDUCTIVE SEDUCTION OF THE OBJECTIVE MOMENT
USE THE LANGUAGE THAT THE PERFORMER AND AUDIENCE CREATE IN THAT MOMENT
CONTEXT IS COTEXT
MEDIATE THE THOUGHT AND THE BEAT
EVERYTHING IS PART OF THE PERFORMANCE
THE AUDIENCE IS THE POET
DETHRONE, THEN DEMOTE THE
POET WHO CAME KNOWING
ELIMINATE THE EGO
DEPLATFORM THE STAGE
ORCHESTRATE THE CHAOS
LANGUAGE EXISTS ONLY IN A SINGLE MOMENT, THAT MOMENT
DOWN WITH DENOTATION
INTERACT THE REACTION
CELEBRATE THE PARTY THAT LANGUAGE IS
THE BEST WORDS IN THE BEST ORDER DOES NOT EXIST
LET ALL PLANS GO WRONG
DEMONETIZE LANGUAGE
DEDOOM THE WRONG NOTES
EMBRACE MISCOMMUNICATION
PROMOTE THE CONTEXT FOR THE SUBJECTIVE WORLD TO BE EXPERIENCED IN THE OBJECTIVE MOMENT
The OBJECT:PARADISE Manifesto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
