1. Flying around the world, attending art biennials and eating expensive meals puts us in touch with the wretched of the earth – by underlining exactly what it is that peasants and workers are missing out on.
2. Like the lumpen-proletariat, the left-bourgeoisie is a distinct class fraction and cannot be conflated with its bourgeois and lumpen enemies. Since the proletariat has failed to act as a class for itself, we have no choice but to lead it to taste and discernment via our elevated aesthetic principles (viz, if you liked Damien Hirst, you’ll love Takashi Murakami – and don’t forget that the current Tate show featuring both of them takes its name from the 1991 album Pop Life by Bananarama!).
3. Since Art Review currently ranks Hans Ulrich Obrist as the single most powerful person in the art world, we look to him as our ‘man of steel’. He’s faster than a speeding bullet and susceptible to nothing but an unfortunate tendency to be distracted in the middle of a conversation by his BlackBerry! Obviously Obrist isn’t really the most powerful man in the world – but with the art market collapsing, Art Review couldn’t place a collector or dealer in pole position, or hand this accolade to Nick Serota (who having massively expanded the Tate franchise is now merely adding an extension to Tate Modern). That said, the left-bourgeoisie prefers illusion to reality, and so we are more than willing to risk our all on a rather arbitrary Art Review ranking!
4. Because long manifestos are so last-century, and we are on our way to another networking opportunity disguised as an expensive meal, we’ll restrict our ‘international manifesto of the left-bourgeoisie’ to four points: but if we can think of any more we won’t hesitate to add them later. For us, knowing lots of famous people is way more important than being theoretically coherent.
5. Art is like an over-masticated piece of chewing gum and the more tasteless it becomes the more we like it! The future of world culture will emerge from the dialectical synthesis of this and point one (above). With a little help from Mike Stanley of course!
6. Did we ever tell you what Hou Hanru said to us in Venice? If not ask about it next time we see you…
7. It is impossible to beat our enemies at their own game. Likewise, to participate in a system that is inherently corrupt gives credence to the Labour Party and trade unions (we always knew they were our enemies). Art, on the other hand – what we discretely refrain from calling elite high culture – is a necessary evil that must be used in the self-defence of the left-bourgeoisie and progressive proletariat! All power to the curators’ and collectors’ councils! Forward with Vasif Kortun!
Paul McCartney, Charles Tompson and Pi Li on behalf of The Left-Bourgeois Club of Great Britain (formerly The National Satanist Movement of Europe, the Americas, Australia, North Africa, the Middle East, the Northern Fringes of the Indian Subcontinent and related dependencies including New Zealand and the Solomon Islands).
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!