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The Allegory of Melancholy


Neoism is simple, amusing, unpretentious, requires no skill, and has no institutional value. Neoism strives for the monostructural and non-theatrical qualities of simple, natural events. Neoism is a game or gag.

Neoism means to purge. It is a fluid discharge, expressed in any form or medium. It is a continuous moving on or passing, as of a flaming iron in a blue endless sky, or a blood transfusion.

In Neoism, there has never been any attempt to agree on aims or methods. It is simply individuals with something unnameable in common who have coalessed. Perpetual vocalizing of our thought brings us no nearer to naming this unnameable thing.

Neoism is opposed to the concept of "creativity" and appears to be trapped in circularity. It explicates itself only by representation, beyond simple negations of "reference." Contained in a transcendental idealism, Neoism is only readable through its representing other which hence becomes its symbol.


Monty Cantsin in SMILE 6 , Dec. 1984