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To consider the notion of manifesto from a musical angle raises several problems, both for the definition of what could qualify as “revolutionary music” and for the shift that music itself could perform in terms of our sense of the word “revolution.” To begin with, we will critically examine the romantic paradigm which considers music as a poetic absolute in order to recognize its strength as a manifesto. Following which we will highlight the underlying paradox in revolutions whose criteria would be so specifically musical that their reach would remain internal to the musical domain. This will lead us to establish a link between the heteronomy of music towards the manifesto claim and the media conditions of music distribution, and consider the attempts to translate sound forms by “temporal semiotics” an eternal return of the aestheticisation of the revolutionary question.

Our study focuses on three manifestos, produced between 1961 and 1978 by three central figures in the field, Pierre Garnier, Bernard Heidsieck and Julien Blaine, which appear as milestones for mapping the field and history of experimental poetry in France. We are interested to the critical and programmatic contents as much as to the modes of action of these manifestos: indeed, the manifesto can not be reduced to a literary genre but is “a gesture, an act” “primarily a pragmatics of discourse, a sociological reading, an analysis in terms of intervention strategies in the field of the institution” (Gleize 1980: 12). What about the act of demonstration in experimental poetry and especially in “action poetry”? Our purpose is articulated around three actions: to quit the book, to make a group exist, and to put poetry in action.

In 1968, a trio of artists composed of writer Hugo Claus, actor Alex Van Royen and critique Carlos Tindemans, launched their manifesto entitled T68, which Claus will have published and distributed in two hundred copies shortly after. In this manifesto, the three men firmly criticize what they describe as the sclerosis of bourgeois theatre, while at the same time defending the fundamental autonomy of a theatre liberated of all possible political, institutional and moral constraints. They demand a necessary and fundamental renewal of Flemish theatre life putting all their hopes on foundation of a new, so-called national theatre that should equally entail a laboratory for experimental research. This paper defends the hypothesis that this manifesto “in spite of itself” occupies a unique but paradoxical position within the recent historiography of Dutch-speaking theatre in Belgium. Both revolutionary and profoundly conservative, this text seemed out of joint with the then anti-authoritarian currents and saw itself (too?) quickly reduced to the status of historical curiosity.

This introduction attempts to define the notion of manifesto by recalling its fundamentally interdisciplinary character, as well as its varying success in the eyes of both critics and artists. Inspired by the works of Perriault and Besnier, the notion of interdisciplinarity is linked to that of “indiscipline” in order to highlight the need for a transversal and fluid approach to knowledge. The paper also analyses the methodology of some contributions to the issue that make use of a database (the Manart database), a tool that’s main function is to classify, to work on hybrid documents such as manifestos. Their scientific protocol must be made explicit and refer to a broader reflection on digital humanities. Finally, the paper addresses the politics of manifestos, while studying the various discourses and acts of indiscipline contained in the issue, and turns our interest to the ones that benefit of the manifesto, this form of confrontation which is often hijacked for contradictory purposes.

Since its creation in 1932 through its integration to the mouvement des Maisons de la culture (Houses of culture’s movement) in 1935 and until the dissolution of the latter in 1939, the Association des Écrivains et Artistes révolutionnaires (AEAR) [Revolutionary Writers and Artists’ Association] stands out as one of the most significant literary and art platforms in France. Founded by communist intellectuals and fellow travellers according to Soviet directives, the AEAR had the vocation of being an organization open to all left-wing forces in order to fight against war and fascism on the cultural front. The manifesto of the AEAR, published in March 1932 in the newspaper L’Humanité, indicates the strategy to carry out this fight. This manifesto is a foundation on which were added, over the years, political and cultural events, which altered its original strategy. The study of this strategy, its evolution, and the implementing of its rules constitute the topic of this work.

The article explores some of the milestones in the history of the architectural manifesto: from Antonio Sant’Elia’s Futurist manifesto (1914) to the anthologies of the first decade of the twenty-first century, through Rem Koolhaas’ retroactive manifesto (1978). Two graphs from the Manart database are the starting point for questioning the manifestos’ definitional difficulties, especially regarding its recent developments in terms of form and function. The links between the history of manifestos and the evolution of its notion are then outlined, a dynamic situated at the crossroads between textual production and critical reception. Following the renewed interest for the manifesto in architecture—the forms of which are yet to be explored—this paper puts into perspective the idea, introduced by the 1980s, that the manifesto has become an obsolete format.

This paper, in addition to filling the gap left by the anthologies, aims to highlight the reappropriation of the manifesto through specific mediums by feminist artists in the 1970s and in the 2000s. As they enlarge the definition of the manifesto through practices that go beyond the text or extend it, feminist artists raise the question of a possible filmwriting (cinécriture), as Agnès Varda calls it, a new form of cinematic language always unique that applies to all levels of production of the work, and fully achieve Danchev’s sentence: “to manifesto is to perform.” The manifesto appears to be at once a programmatic, political and symbolic discourse of feminist positioning.

The aim of this paper is to address a specific kind of manifesto: the exhibition catalogue manifesto. Is it an anachronistic form? To what extent does this type of artistic writing linked to an exhibition retain traces of the collective dimension, the will to change the world, the notion of progress, or the emergence of a new art? The same goes for the tabula rasa. How can we evaluate the links to politics, to the political dimension, or to political manifestos? These are a few of the questions raised in an examination of the theoretical construction of the manifesto, based on an in depth analysis of a particular body of work (the catalogue of the 12th Biennial of Contemporary Arts in Lyons in 2013).