The Agenda

The Flash That Refuses To Fade

In our last issue we published an interview with Bert Crenca, Art Director and co-founder of AS220. This is a continuation of that transcript, focusing on the importance of manifestos and public dialogue.

The phenomenon of manifestos, and the phenomenon of change, is a social-historical accident. The conditions in this town and the historical conditions around the country in the mid-’80s created a lot of alternative spaces, and we started networking with each other. We were in contact with the Knitting Factory in New York, which started a little bit after AS220 did, the Worcester Artist Group, the Middle East in Cambridge, and Populist Pudding in Connecticut. These alternative spaces were creeping up all around the country and there was such a need for something like AS220, that if it wasn’t me then it might have been someone else. The idea of social-historical accident, which I got from a brief conversation I had with Bobby Seals about the Black Panthers, resonates with me about our own history, and the types of advances that have happened historically when the conditions were right.

Providence’s location between Boston and New York, and the post-industrial edge, is a feeder for creative efforts, non-profits, and organizations such as RISD and Brown University. There were a number of people who felt that way, and it became part of the rationale for AS220, the manifesto, and the concept of an unjuried space. But so many artists and musicians in this town were trying to get out! And I thought: You’re one person who goes to New York, you end up working three jobs, and you only go out when friends come visit. So lets make a scene here, and maybe the scene will make so much noise that people will come from the outside to pluck from it, which in fact is what’s happening now.

Artists are noisy. That’s a good thing. Just a simple statement like that, as opposed to taking a defensive posture, makes the statement easy to embrace. Look at it like this: Providence should be proud of that fact that we have artists and that they’re noisy and that they are noisy by nature. But in order for the artists to give a different perspective and different direction to public dialogue, they still have to be politically savvy by speaking that type of language.

The whole concept of the manifesto was introduced to me through the Futurists and later the Fluxus movement. I had a warm feeling for the concept and purposefulness of manifestos. They are intended to activate; it is not about soft language, what is practical, or what could work. A manifesto is meant to provoke thought.