Art movement of the 1970s started by Monty Cantsin (or Istvan Kantnor or Stewart Home depending on which stupid myth you ascribe to), neoism is characterized by its dedication to revealing the beauty of aesthetic form and the absolute nature of individuality.


Neoists use toothless street combs and flaming steam irons.
Neoists sleep with animals and drink blood.
Neoists turn lead into gold and turn gold into shit.
Neoists host apt festivals.

Neoism is a set of methods for removing the ruins of the twentieth century in order to make room for Akademgorod.

The central three methods are plagiarism, shared identity, and false histories.

Plagiarism is used in order to decommodify ideas. The critics of plagiarism hold that plagiarism devalues ideas, but this is of course, an exact reversal of the truth of the type that capitalism has always favoured. (e.g. the idea that shampoo nourishes hair, the idea that cars are sexy, the idea that humans are interchangeable capital while commodities are living things, etc.) Plagiarism is neccesary to revalue ideas. It is their use as commodities which removes their real, human value.

Shared identity is a means of dissolving the individual credit/debit system. By rejecting individual identification, the neoist hopes to simultaneously avoid blame and accrue free credit.

False histories are endlessly generated to constantly breathe new life into the neoist myth and to resist art-historification. Neoism has perfected this technique, surpassing its forebears dada, situationist, and fluxus to the extent that even now, some thirty years after the movement started, art historians have done their best to ignore it, or to treat it as only a footnote to the more historifiable mail art movement. It should be mentioned that the art movements mentioned aren't the philosophical forebears of neoism (neoism is not an art movement), only that they had similar aims in resistance to categorization and historification.

The above three methods are only the beginning of neoist action. Many other methods are borrowed from other movements, such as the derive, various dislocations, various misdirections, misinformation, hysteria, the abuse of drugs and alcohol, abstinence, sobriety, foolish behaviour, sensible behaviour, dehistorization, rehistorization, and perhaps most importantly, actions against neoism, as neoism is clearly its own worst enemy.


Neoists have a pathological fear of moustaches.
Neoists like visiting each other.
Neoists like robots.

Neoists tend to use shared names such as Luther Blissett as a shortcut to fame. In a state of sheer laziness, the neoist hopes that enough people acting under hir shared name will take enough action that sHe will be recognised as a Special Person by virtue of being associated with that name.

A decent (though largely preoccupied with fanciful and sentimental distortions of the actual history of the movement) website on the subject can be found at http://www.thing.de/projekte/7:9%23/Welcome.html


Neoism on Everything2 is largely limited to this node. We can ascribe this ghettoization of neoist philosophy to the following bourgeois abreactions:

1. If it's an "-ism" it must offer a simple, coherent ideology!

and:

2. If someone as smart as me can't make sense of this stuff, it must be nonsense or worse!

As we can see from the explicatory text below, the critics reveal themselves to be pure neoists, which is to say, they viscerally reject the neoist tendency in favour of their own life-impulse.

Neoism is generally considered to be a manifestation of anti-neoist tendencies inasmuch as its isolation as a phenomenon violates the first tenet of neoism:
"Anything" can be anything.
(The connection between referee and referent is in every case arbitrary.)






Neoism : The Excluded Middle

The name "neoism" itself gives the game away even before further investigation is undertaken. Prefix "neo" + suffix "ism" modifying no (all) subject(s).


Neoism is another bore-hole in the neoist skull.
Neoism is another excuse for art or for art strikes.
Neoism is unneccesary and for this very reason we can no longer live without it.