pseudonym
The need for a
pseudonym emerges when one looks in a mirror and sees someone else, someone familiar
but curiously unfamiliar, someone overwhelmed with an idea, a story, a vision
of the world. A pseudonym is an alternative name, a pen name, a stage name, any
kind of name that one uses to, in some way, separate their creative persona
from their primary self or explore an alternative urge. The use of a pseudonym
uncompromisingly affirms the primary self, but also acknowledges a willingness
to accept another set of rules or abandon rules altogether. It is then
possible, after a period of exploration, for an alternative and primary self to
merge, or to continue to coexist as separate entities. Mylo Mark is
decontextualized version of its primary self, a motivation, a set of
narratives, a call for ideas to be explored, stories to be told, views of the world
to be exposed.
Mylo Mark is a
pseudonym.
manifesto
Manifestos are
proclamations of future intentions, political in nature even when written by
artists or poets. The problem with manifestos is how definitive and
uncompromising they are as well as their populist intention. They tend to
become a dogmatic set of rules rather than a starting point which is what they
should be. There is a great value in formulating a set of guiding principles
for any kind of quest. This is of particular importance for those whose areas
of interest are too wide and too spread apart. The lucky ones don’t need a
manifesto because they have an inherent clarity of where they are headed.
Manifesto should not be used for narrowing down of subjects to be explored but
establishing a common denominator that will allow a simultaneous progression.
By no means one should ever aim to establish truth with a manifesto. Individual
truth of a manifesto should never aim to become general truth. One should never
be judged for changing beliefs and abandoning a manifesto.
This is a manifesto.
authenticity
If it hasn’t become
clear already, we are talking about a new kind of expression and looking for
its form and place in the spectrum of artistic and poetic production.
“Production” is an important word because it suggests development, repetition,
quantity and a certain market appeal. In order to be justified, any kind of
production, automatically requires distribution - users or audience - who
require a verification that what they are consuming is not “a fake”. The
question of authenticity is the question of our time. Product or physical
object like a bank note, unlike information, can be marked by its originator.
Originator, in order to be able to mark the product legitimately, requires a legal
right to do so, an intellectual ownership of the idea that is being sold. An
artist or an agency may rely on copyright; a brand or manufacturer may rely on
trademark. Products by an artist are marked with a certificate of authenticity
while a brand sticks logos, holograms and codes. The aspiration of Mylo Mark is
the possibility of utilitarianism of a brand and a strict rigour in craft and
control over quantities of a work of art. Quantities must and should always
derive from the genuine need of the work of art to reach its full potential in
taking different forms and never from market demand.
Mylo Mark products
are marked by a Certificate of Authenticity.
incoherence
Some of us have an
internal battle against the specific. Striving for universal comes from a fear
of passing time or egocentric obsession with relevance. Incoherence is
interpreted as a millennial disease, an effect of our ever-shortening attention
span, an aristocratic snobbery of getting bored quickly. Some disciplines or
businesses are based on incoherence, offering their customers or audience the
new, the never-seen-before, the needs, desires and fetishes they never knew
they had, the perpetual self-discovery. The hyper-need for stimulating
sensations is as sustainable for our psychology as plastic bags are for our
environment. Progress is a different matter. Foucault states in his third
volume of The History of Sexuality, that differences in behaviour among people,
historically referred as peculiarities or even illnesses, are a natural urge to
explore, to progress. This is not to say that disease is always a social
construct but incoherence is of coherent nature. Nietzsche writes in Twilight
of the Idols: “One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in
contradictions; one remains young only on condition the soul does not relax,
does not long for peace....”
Mylo Mark is a
unifier, the coherent thread of incoherent production.
definition
One of the most
fraudulent categorisations is the one of style - it should be categorically
dismissed before any further discussion on defining creative production. Every
other attempt to assign labels or boxes is a desperate, often self-prescribed
painkiller - a desire to belong to a herd or explain things that are beyond our
capabilities to understand. It would be correct to observe that this set of
principles listed here, often try to clarify the language before addressing the
concepts and their relevance. Anthropologically - concepts come before
language, according to linguist Noam Chomsky, and spoken language is never
enough to fully translate everything that goes on in our mind. It would also be
correct to challenge the attempt to set out principles of an artistic practice,
because just like the relationship between concepts and language, listed
principles will never fully reflect intentions behind the work. Intention is,
therefore, to loosen up definitions of production and refuse categorizations.
Once we accept limitations of language, our focus shifts on the product itself
and its value in generating conceptual thoughts in each individual mind that it
engages with.
Mylo Mark is in a
constructive denial of established categories.
business
Commercialisation of
culture often provokes disgust even among those who benefit it, both as
producers and users. There is something undesirable about availability. It
works just like in life. When you appear available in interpersonal
relationships, the desire for you decreases. With experience, you may learn
that you must create an illusion of unavailability to generate desire. This
mechanism is often used is commerce. One may, on the other hand, decide to take
an honest approach and naturally alienate those who operate superficially. This
is a less commercially viable approach. One may wrap its core ideas, that are
not so mass-digestible, in layers of mass-digestible narratives and seek
commercial success in that way. Mass-digestible narratives are those that play
on our basic instincts: they are easy to understand, widely recognisable.
Design as a discipline has separated from art because of its unambiguous
commercial desire. Formation of brands took that desire one step further,
elaborating on familiarity to the masses in order to generate commercial
success. Commercialisation is a legitimate, democratic desire.
Mylo Mark is
available for purchase, but it is not produced to be purchased.
body object space narrative
The absence of
categories gives way to instinct as a driving force of artistic making.
Acceptance of limitations of language gives way to conceptual contemplation as
a primary method of absorbing the creative product. If we also accept that a
work of art is never complete in a formal sense, even when distributed, we are
on the path of understanding artistic product as an organism, an ever-evolving
entity. Only ideas that are capable of taking different forms or adapting to
different environments are the ones that survive. The starting point can be any
form - an image, a garment, an object, a space, a recording in time, a
narrative. Regardless where the conception comes from, production is not a
meare multiplication of the starting form but it’s evolution into other forms.
That is what is meant by production. The idea of mass-production is a lateral
one, across disciplines and along the boundaries. Our bodies give scale to
everything we make and everything we make gives us the sense of scale. We stand
in spaces and against objects and they make us and provoke narratives as much
as we initially made them by materialising our abstract thinking.
Mylo Mark is a cross
disciplinary practice.
context
Why does something
always have to originate from something else? Because of our anxiety and fear
of the unknown. Nietzsche explains in Twilight of the Idols: “...because
tracing the unknown back to the known is alleviating, it gives us feeling of
power”. That might be an explanation of an urge to attribute gender, ethnicity,
sexuality, personal and social history to a work of art. So, what would
artistic production look like if we were to get rid of the categories that
presently define it? If we apply the thinking of Michel Foucault - “context” is
created by power structures to sustain their authority. Context is a mechanism
to control knowledge. Well, here, for example, the only context is the free
thought and instinct by which the work in question, call it knowledge, is
conceived and produced - non-context. Parameters are defined by the process of
production, techniques and the ability to evolve into different forms. Social
constructs are not irrelevant. The products of Mylo Mark have an ambition to
engage in the contemporary discourse or, at least, in its denial. However,
social constructs are never, ever a starting point.
Mylo Mark operates
outside of the socially constructed environment.
time
Ideas need time to
develop. Some more, some less. When an area of creative production is subjected
to commercial forces, time is inflicted to reflect the pace of distribution and
consumption of the specific market. In that way, ideas are forced to a very
limited level of development. Sometimes that works. Some artists are explosive,
over-productive, precise in ideas. Sometimes it doesn’t work. These nine
principles took two and a half years to be written, yet they took “all the
running in the world”. Red Queen’s race from Lewis Carroll’s Through the
Looking Glass is emblematic of our contemporary relationship with time and
production. Alice was famously engaged by the Red Queen in a long, exhausting
run that didn’t seem to get her anywhere. She told the Queen that in her
country, meaning our reality, “you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run
very fast for a long time." To that Red Queen responded: "A slow sort
of country!" (...) "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you
can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must
run at least twice as fast as that!”
Mylo Mark takes time.
Mylo Mark doesn’t take time for granted.
