You can look at Karim Rashid’s work here (note: he has not made his full manifesto public) : (www.karimrashid.com) After reading this partial listing of Karim’s manifesto, and seeing some of his work consider these questions:
Which one of his ten points speaks to you the most? Why?
I guess my favorite point of his is to “Consume experiences, not things.” Coming from a spiritual person this sort of statement makes sense, but it’s also an important notion from one artist to many others. Artists and creators do not sell objects and possessions, but experiences. Stories are experiences, and that’s why people value them as much as their own experiences. And if one does not consume experiences, one cannot turn them into stories, one cannot make art.
Can you see a correlation between his manifesto and the work he does? Do you think his spirituality informs his art? Explain.
I think that all artists are informed by some sort of spirituality. They may not know how to quantify that spirit, but it’s most likely there. Because artists create great works out of absolutely nothing, spirit is the only thing they have to build off of. Those who sell objects rely on the objects themselves and the design of those objects so as to produce more exactly like the originals. Those who sell experiences are selling something intangible, which has no design and cannot be reproduced multiple times in a factory, and so spirit is the only medium for creation available to them.
The Storyteller’s Manifesto
1. You have a special place in the village
- In the villages of the hunter-gatherer Hadza tribe, one elder is designated as the storyteller of the tribe. The storyteller is responsible for not only entertaining the tribe, but also recording and passing on the legends and history of the Hadza people, traditions that stretch back to the dawn of Mankind. The Hadza, just as our ancient ancestors did, understand the importance of such a role in their village, for without the storytellers, they would have no history to guide them, no tales of Hadza heroes to inspire them, and so without the storytellers, humanity may never have evolved to our current civilization. As such, the storyteller is rewarded with the best food known to the Hadzabe; the brain of a baboon. The village system remains in place even in the modern era and all across the world. Storytelling is extremely valuable, and those who do it well are rewarded quite well. Remember this when you join the grand tradition of telling stories
2. Nothing is new
- There’s nothing wrong with telling old stories, just like there’s nothing wrong with telling new ones. If you tell an original story, great. If you want to tell an old story, that’s fine too, but it may be best to change it a bit. Why and how are the focus of my next point.
3. Find another angle
- A story is like a photograph; we usually only see a tiny fraction of the entire image. It’s impossible for one person to tell every angle of a single story. There are just too many. And so, if you know of an old story that you’d like to tell again, try looking at the picture from another angle. Not only is this more interesting to an audience, but it also gives you a chance to discover things about the original image that you may not have seen.
4. There is no fourth wall
- In theater, we say that there is a “fourth wall” dividing the audience from the story being told to them. When the story acknowledges the existence of the audience, the fourth wall is said to be broken. The fourth wall is just one of many “walls” in storytelling, but all of the walls really boil down to the separation of fiction and reality. I’m not suggesting that to tell good stories you must break the fourth wall or any wall, but I am saying that it’s important to remember that none of these walls actually exist, and so it would be a shame to contain yourself in an imaginary prison. Being ignorant to freedom when one has it is the ultimate slavery.
5. Make it real
- If you’re going to break what separates the audience from the story, or the real world from the story world, then reactions must seem real. I’m not saying situations must be real, or even believable, but the reaction of characters must be believable. After all, by ignoring the wall that doesn’t exist, you make the characters into real people and real people into characters. The real people can’t be characters if the characters can’t be real people.
6. Don’t make excuses
- Characters must be believable, but not situations. Don’t ever apologize or make excuses for why something isn’t believable. That’s not your job. After all, you should tell every story as if it actually happened, how are you to know the logistics or physics behind it? Who, what, when, where, why, that’s all you need to tell them. How is unimportant.
7. Ask for nothing
- Having said that, don’t ask an audience to suspend their disbelief. Don’t ask them for anything. If you’re good at it, you shouldn’t have to. You bring the story, they bring themselves. Storytellers don’t take orders and they don’t ask people to change their appetite to fit what they’re serving.
8. Don’t ignore stories
- I mean, it’s not as if you can. If you try, you will fail. Your subconscious knows which stories need to be told when it creates or discovers them. You’re conscious will then try to tell it in a logical fashion, and it will run into a wall and disregard the story as impossible to tell. But your subconscious will bring it up again and eventually, you’ll find a way.
9. Focus on response, not stimulus
- Stories are not about events, but about the characters reaction to those events. This harkens back to my first point, and the fact that storytelling serves an ancient and vital purpose. The whole point of storytelling is to examine humanity itself and to provide future generations of humans with examples and opinions of what humans have done in certain situations and what humans should do in certain situations. As such, the response to a stimulus is always more important than the stimulus itself.
10. You’re always working
- If you’re a storyteller, you’re always working. You may not realize it, but you’re always telling stories, you’re always collecting stories, you’re always preparing or writing stories. Next time you think you’re doing something completely mundane, ask yourself what you’re really doing. Chances are, you’re storytelling.
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