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Manifesto for MONA

by Douglas Anthony Cooper

THE MUSEUM OF NON-VISIBLE ART

(This was a collaborative project with Praxis and James Franco. I contributed two invisible works to the museum, and wrote the manifesto. I’m not sure we did more with the concept than Yoko Ono, but I remain happy with what I wrote.)

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(The invisible works themselves can be seen, as it were, elsewhere.)

A MANIFESTO: TO CLARIFY THE NON-VISIBLE

1. 

Art itself is nothing.

All that matters is what is left.

The afterglow.

The ambition is to produce this.

We strive for an afterglow with no thing preceding.

A glow.

Phosphenes.

2. 

The only surface worth painting is the mind of the viewer.

The viewing of art should not require eyes.

Art should be entoptic.

We strive to force meditation.

The prisoner’s cinema.

Phosphenes.

3.

Art is without value until it faces the market.

The market purveys value.

Money is banal until it has been spent.

Money spent on art is money transformed.

Money spent is mourned.

This mourning is eased by art.

We strive to enhance mourning.

Mourning is a response to what is not there.

An afterglow.

4.

What you see does not matter.

What you have seen is everything.

All you truly buy is the afterglow.

It has value.

5.

You must pay more for the glow that has no thing.

Nothing before.

Pure after.

Phosphenes.

RULES FOR THE CREATION OF THE NON-VISIBLE

You shall not add to the banal.  (You shall not build.)

You shall not litter the world with art. (You shall not make.)

What you have not made must be beautiful.

What you have not made must have value.

You must bring what you have not made to market.

(The market will give it value.)

You must give to the market absence.

(Money is banal until spent.)

You must offer the market anguish.

(What is spent is painful.)

You must make the market beautiful.

(Nothing beautiful without pain.)

You must increase the world behind the eyes.

The wreck of the Medusa.

It left us with phosphenes.

You must conjure them and sell them.

Only when you have done this are you one of us.