Manifesto

What is a Manifesto? There’s an amazing installation at the Park Avenue Armory over the holidays by Julian Rosefeldt . There are 13 films featuring Cate Blanchett, and in each one, she plays a completely different character and expresses the manifesto from a distinct art movement — like surrealism, abstract expressionism, pop art. I learned that a manifesto is made up of 3 elements— strong language, rejection of a norm, and a call to action.

Here, from an essay by Zoe Moss from the 70s called “It Hurts to be Obsolete” that was read aloud in the recent movie by Mike Mills, “2oth Century Women”:

“Listen to me! Think what it is like to have most of your life ahead and be told you are obsolete! Think what it is like to feel attraction, desire, affection toward others, to want to tell them about yourself, to feel that assumption on which self-respect is based, that you are worth something…To be, in other words, still a living woman and to be told that every day that you are not a woman but a tired object that should disappear…don’t you pretend for one minute as you look at me…that I am not as alive as you are…”

This really spoke to me. I’m 55 and even with everything I do to feel and look young (and it’s a lot that I do — more to come on this) — about ten years ago I noticed that I just started becoming invisible. Not to my family or in my actual workplace but out there in the world at large.

So, here’s the beginning of our manifesto. Let’s figure it out together. Let’s be VISIBLE.