For around 11 years now I have been attempting to articulate what a Manifesto for a New Renaissance would be. One week ago, two art students from the local college came to my studio, and wanted to ask more about my work. A series of very intense and conversations, sharing of philosophies and art practices led me to realize the time is now to share this.
These words show how a certain type of art points us to a whole new level of perceiving reality. This way of seeing is described in different circles as Integral, Whole System, Teal, Evolutionary, New Paradigm and many other names.
I don't really care what its called. I just care that this is articulated.
I'm not even really settled on “Soul Renaissance”. The word “Soul” has as many disparate connotations as the word “God.”
In this post I don’t attempt to sum up the state of the world. All I know is that our leading cultural edge is failing us. We are stuck in a post-modern quagmire.
Now is the time to light ourselves and each other up.
This Manifesto shares the principles of how many of us want to create art that cuts straight to the core, and reawakens all of us to the possibility of who we really are.
I hope you feel this, as we do.
Louis
A clarion call to all creators.
An artist is simply this… someone who creates art. Art is something that moves you. Makes you open. Lights you up. Wether you create art with words, products, people or experiences.
The time for you is now.
In this world, many of us want to leave the past behind, or destroy it, so we can move forward. Many more of us want to go back, and stay in a past that has long gone.
We believe we need to do both: To embrace the future we need to fully integrate the past.
We create art to enable us to embody and incarnate the full human story and integrate the best and worst of what its means to be human. To have the courage to integrate our shadow, and face the darkness, so we can collectively embrace the light.
We create a body of art that points the way, that in this current “hall of mirrors”, become mirrors and windows of possibility. These works of art that we hold up to the world and say – “we need to integrate this” and that say “this is what is truly possible for us when we embody the truth.”
We burn down the mediocrity, distraction and noise of this age, we meet the chaos head on, take the burden of this world on our collective shoulders and we turn chaos into beauty, despondency into hope, and discohord into harmony.
We believe the role of the artist is:
to stand on the shaky ground of possibility and create…
to walk out onto the thinnest of branches, and to create,
to walk on the impossible surface of finest strands of streams before they become mainstream and create…
…and show everyone else that what seems unreal is real.
The truth is we take responsibility. And this sends rhythms of light and air that reveal the patterns of hope: the fractal arteries of the cosmos are created through us and our art.
This middle c of truth that we strike has a ripple effect up and down the spiral of evolution that brings healing and life.
A harmonising of: shadow and light, disintegration and integration, creation and destruction, peace and disruption. We embrace emergence, spontaneity and flow as the wave we ride to a stabilised new way of being.
We know there will be more suffering and pain ahead. But our eyes are open. We do not flinch. We create in the face of fear.
We inspire this generation and the next that there life is art, and the world is the canvas. We have a collective responsibility to re-imagine ourselves and re-create this world. And that this has divine and cosmic significance.
We are here to enable every soul on this planet to strike a middle c in the chaos, and tune up to the world as symphony.
Together we are co-creating the world as a symphony of light out of the darkness.
We are The Soul Renaissance.