***Mythopoesis*** or mythmaking offers a reading of contemporary art and activist practices as performative forms of storytelling.
In oral cultures, the storyteller encourages his/her audience to continue to tell stories so that the listener gains potential access to the same authority of the narrator simply by listening. Storytelling is understood by the members of the community as a living experience, a pragmatic form of knowledge that transmits “the set of rules that constitutes the social bond.” (Lyotard, 1984)
The main focus of this blog are the stories that are told and retold by a transnational community of artists, activists, networkers, and cultural producers. While not necessarily normative, these narratives shape imaginary clusters, probe ethical codes and sometimes give birth to autonomous institutions, which are handed down from one generation of artists and activists to another.
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Mythopoesis is managed and maintained by Marco Deseriis a.k.a. SNAFU.
There are numerous interpretations regarding the origins and meaning of this word. My favorite one is Hagbard Celine’s formulation of the Snafu principle as a Zen principle of sorts, also known as “Never Whistle While You Are Pissing”:
If you whistle while you’re pissing, you have two minds where one is quite sufficient. If you have two minds, you are at war with yourself. If you are at war with yourself, it is easy for an external force to defeat you. This is why Mong-tse wrote, “A man must destroy himself before others can destroy him.”- Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus! Trilogy
