Defastenism
Encyclopedia
Remodernism
Remodernism revives aspects of modernism, particularly in its early form, and follows postmodernism, to which it contrasts. Adherents of remodernism advocate it as a forward and radical, not reactionary, impetus....
art movement
Art movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a restricted period of time, or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years...
founded in Dublin in 2004. The Defastenists are also known as The Defastenist Party. Artists who have participated in it include Gary Farrelly
Gary Farrelly
Gary Farrelly is an Irish artist.-Life and work:The artist Gary Farrelly was born in 1983 in the Irish capital Dublin. His artwork often involves a recurring fixation with narcissistic, utopic and infrastructural themes...
, Padraic E. Moore, Alexander Reilly, Liam Ryan and Sophie Iremonger.
Origins
Defastenism was founded in May 2004 by undergraduates at the Dublin National College of Art and DesignNational College of Art and Design
The National College of Art and Design is a national art and design school in Dublin, Ireland.-History:Situated on Thomas Street, the NCAD started as a private drawing school and has become a national institution educating over 1,500 day and evening students as artists, designers and art educators...
, Gary Farrelly
Gary Farrelly
Gary Farrelly is an Irish artist.-Life and work:The artist Gary Farrelly was born in 1983 in the Irish capital Dublin. His artwork often involves a recurring fixation with narcissistic, utopic and infrastructural themes...
, , Ben Mullen, Alexander Reilly and Seanan Kerr. Moore, Farrelly and Reilly co-wrote a Defastenist manifesto. The membership consists of artists, musicians, architects, writers, film makers and designers.
The Defastenists are a self-declared Remodernist
Remodernism
Remodernism revives aspects of modernism, particularly in its early form, and follows postmodernism, to which it contrasts. Adherents of remodernism advocate it as a forward and radical, not reactionary, impetus....
art movement. "Defastenism" is a term coined by the group. Moore described the use of the word:
- The term comes specifically from the idea of unbuckling the metaphorical seatbelt. The concept that one must "Defasten" from the Jetzeit.The aeroplane—a constant motif in Defastenist art—is one of the symbols, which we believe defines our zeitgeist.
The Defastenists believe contemporary culture has become afflicted by "cultural paralysis", and endeavour to construct a revolution of "vigour and vitality".
They have a strongly theatrical, propagandistic and rhetorical self-promotional style (reminiscent of early 20th Century movements such as Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
), including appointing themselves to ministerial posts of the imaginary "Kunstrepublic". This ideological DKR nation was according to Padraic Moore, "definitely a symptom of not being able to deal with the city that we’re living in." Their expression of an inner world has some parallels with Surrealism, as does their fixation with obsolescence and the uncanny.
As of 2007,with the resignation of Alexander Reilly the remaining group's most prominent members are Liam Ryan(London), Padraic E. Moore (Dublin),
Gary Farrelly
Gary Farrelly
Gary Farrelly is an Irish artist.-Life and work:The artist Gary Farrelly was born in 1983 in the Irish capital Dublin. His artwork often involves a recurring fixation with narcissistic, utopic and infrastructural themes...
(based in Paris), David Turpin (Dublin), Donna Marie O'Donovan (Dublin) and Christoph Kronke (Berlin).
Philosophy
The Defastenists state:- We believe that art is a mission demanding complete fanaticism.
- It is our duty as Defastenists to excavate fully our fetishes, obsessions and desires through material forms of cultural production.
- We oppose aesthetic dematerialization and are dedicated to the art object, the obsessive generation of which manifests itself in all aspects of Defastenist activity.
- Our meticulous process of production in any and all media reflects a fundamental faith in the Utopian functions of art.
- We reject cynicism and disaffection. We are allied to the founding Fathers and Mothers of Modernism and share their faith in progress.
- Defastenism proposes an art that is all encompassing. Our practice unites the conscious and the unconscious, the private and the public. It is inflected with nostalgia; it is of the present and for the future.
- The Defastenist Party and its members assume an auto-propulsive role in the actualisation of personal and professional ambitions, while maintaining complete loyalty to the Party.
- We aspire to be both an institution and an Establishment, complete with rules and rigour.
- At all times there exists a physical headquarters from which we conduct our ventures and campaigns.
Activities
Initially the Defastenists staged weekly cabarets or happenings ("Cabaretta Defastena") in Dublin, and have held similar events consisting of performance, lectures, and recitals in Galway, Belfast, London, Paris and Berlin. They have staged group shows in Dublin, Limerick, Berlin and Paris, exhibiting mainly two-dimensional art in random styles and installations. Happenings and screenings include Europa and Kunstbahnhoff.
Irish Museum of Modern Art
The Irish Museum of Modern Art also known as IMMA, is Ireland's leading national institution exhibiting and collecting modern and contemporary art. The museum opened in May 1991 and is located in Royal Hospital Kilmainham, a 17th-century building near Heuston Station to the west of Dublin's city...
. In May 2005, The Dubliner
The Dubliner (magazine)
-Publication format:The magazine had ten issues per year, and contents include opinion, reporting, political and social commentary and essays on Irish culture...
said:
In August 2005, Gary Farrelly and Alex Reilly represented the Defastenists in Addressing the Shadow and Making Friends with Wild Dogs: Remodernism
Addressing the Shadow and Making Friends with Wild Dogs: Remodernism
Addressing the Shadow and Making Friends with Wild Dogs: Remodernism, held in 2005 in New York, United States, was the first American exhibition that included work from all of the Remodernist groups, and was one of the last art shows at CB's 313, the gallery connected to CBGB...
at CBGB
CBGB
CBGB was a music club at 315 Bowery at Bleecker Street in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.Founded by Hilly Kristal in 1973, it was originally intended to feature its namesake musical styles, but became a forum for American punk and New Wave bands like Ramones, Misfits, Television, the...
313 gallery in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, along with Stuckist
Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...
artists and Remodernist film makers
Remodernist Film
Remodernist film developed in the United States and the United Kingdom in the early 21st century with ideas related to those of the international art movement Stuckism and its manifesto, Remodernism...
and Stuckist Photographers.
In 2005, Victoria Mary Clarke
Victoria Mary Clarke
Victoria Mary Clarke is an Irish journalist and writer. She writes a column for the Sunday Independent. She has also written for The Guardian and the Daily Mail. She is the author of Angel in Disguise?....
, author and now wife of Shane MacGowan
Shane MacGowan
Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan is an Irish musician and singer, best known as the original singer and songwriter of The Pogues.-History:...
, joined the group, having heard the members were attractive young men who liked dressing in white tailcoats. She received a show invite which read:
- Dearest dearest, We, the Defastenists, call upon all those who hear us to crucify bordom (sic) and destroy negativity. It is our aim to encourage and incite optimism, regeneration, enthusiasm, self-excavation, and ultimately a fresh,non-elitist scene which expresses itself through the universal language of art.
As a result, a Happening
Happening
A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere , are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience...
, filmed by Sky One
Sky One
Sky1 is the flagship BSkyB entertainment channel available in the United Kingdom and Ireland.The channel first launched on 26 April 1982 as Satellite Television, and is the fourth-oldest TV channel in the United Kingdom, behind BBC One , ITV and BBC Two...
, took place at the home of Clarke's friend, Marina Guinness, consisting of an art display in a marquee on the lawn, the coronation of the hostess as Defastenist queen, pole-dancing, a trip to a meteor
METEOR
METEOR is a metric for the evaluation of machine translation output. The metric is based on the harmonic mean of unigram precision and recall, with recall weighted higher than precision...
site, the burning of an effigy of negativity, buckets of Pimms and strawberries eaten off Defastenist Sophie Iremonger's naked body.
The Third Defastenist Exhibition took place at Liberty Hall, Dublin, on 14 September 2005.
Gary Farelly is staging a permanent exhibition of Defastenist art at Galerie W in Paris.