# Neoism Now

The writer of this text got sucked into Neoism by a book with the above title, DIY-published in Berlin in the aftermath of a Neoist festival. Thirty years later, the question of what constitutes "Neoism Now" doesn't seem to have got old. The first Neoist manifesto, published by Monty Cantsin, stated that "Neoism has no manifesto". If Neoism simply refers to an -ism that isn't fixed, but is constantly being reinvented - preferably by different people and with different meanings, intentions and in different cultural contexts -, then any attempt to put down what is Neoism now is reactionary. (If that had been stated in an early Neoist publication.) 

At the point of this writing, outside observers may identify Neoism with collectively used names and identities - from Monty Cantsin to Tae Ateh etc. - or just the opposite, with a number of individuals and their egos. Some may think that it is somehow related to Situationism, others that it is post-apocalyptic cyberpunk. Some may associate it with slick electropop video aesthetics, others with lo-fi DIY. Some may think of it as 'performance', others as 'Internet culture' or as 'music', 'zinemaking' etc. They may variably place Neoism in the 1980s, 1990s or 2000s, or think that it happened in Canada, the U.S., the UK, Eastern Europe, Italy or Thailand. 


the present stage of Neoism, the Neoist Network, everything that concerns the life and activities of a Neoist conspirator/collaborator today




Thank you for the update. These questions bug me, too, because I am not sure whether Neoism - under that name or brand - is still something worth pursuing today. Istvan coined it as an open and practically empty name, as something to be perpetually redefined through different practices and practitioners. At some point, that reinvention can also affect the name itself, when it has acquired too much fixed meaning and historical baggage. 

I like to think of Neoism as a seed, among others for practices that leave behind the pesky "art" context & reference (Fluxus, for example, tried that too in the 1960s but failed because most Fluxus members still wanted to be artists), that radically subvert and undermine identity, authorship & work through shared identities/multiple-use names (something that Neoism arguably did better in theory than in practice) and rejection of any property including intellectual property, of quality (so, yeah, Neoism is crap). And to Istvan's credit, the apocalyptic tunes and visions that his signature contribution to Neoism were prescient of the imminent (and in my opinion, no longer stoppable) collapse of human civilization and apocalypse of this planet.

In the past ten years, I've mostly encountered the above energies in other areas and groups, for example in Afrofuturist DIY collectives (that's why a festival I helped organize in Rotterdam was called "Afrofuturism Now", with a nod to "Neoism Now"), in anti-copyright printmaking collectives like Woodstone Kugelblitz (Rotterdam) and Hardworking Goodlooking (Manila), in the refugee smuggling and propaganda music of the Goodiepal & Pals collective, in the early 2000s also in the Internet and media hacks of Ubermorgen, 0100101110101101.org, antiorp and others. 

In that sense, I see Neoism more as a point of departure, but don't think that the name is still very relevant or desirable for others to use. It will probably die with Istvan and the people who kept Neoism alive in its first 40 years, and maybe live on as a digital zombie made up of abandoned avatars of the people who used "Monty Cantsin" as their Internet login and social media handle in order to escape identification and control.