- by Paul Conway
GET READY!
GET READY FOR AUGUST 9, 2023!
GET READY FOR TOTAL REFORM!
GET READY FOR THE PRECONDITON: TOTAL RE-IMAGINATION!
On August 9, 1948, a variegated group of sixteen artists in Montréal published Refus Global – Total Refusal – a manifesto.
Despite the title this was an Affirmative Action.
Seventy-five years later Canadians still bristle with affirmative urges, even as we find ourselves surrounded by a dense cloud of negation.
Find ourselves? We may, we can, although under these conditions we are more likely to lose ourselves. This will never do!
We believe Canadians must take advantage of this important anniversary by launching ourselves anew towards TOTAL REFORM.
Enough tinkering!
Our societal juggernaut has run amok, crashing through the foundations of our cherished edifices, flinging devastation everywhere, undermining our health, our prosperity, our sense of justice, our very survival. We need fundamental, not incremental change.
Canadians can no longer ignore the need for TOTAL REFORM and we must think together about what that would mean. We cannot think, however, about what we cannot imagine. Re-imagination comes first.
The task is complex, like the society we have created. Complex tasks require complex thinking and a cast of mind that is up to the job.
On the other hand, over the past two centuries we have created and adopted for ourselves a battery of amazing intellectual and imaginative tools.
These, if we use them properly, with enough energy and in the right spirit, are powerful for good beyond our wildest dreams. That spirit is integrating, ruthlessly optimistic, imaginative, fearless. We are calling the spirit FOURFOLD VISION, and the cast of mind TETRADICAL.
Refus Global was, and is, a literary collage, radical for its time, consisting of the manifesto itself and eight supporting essays.
Four hundred copies were mimeographed and enclosed in wittily decorated folders.
Sixteen artists signed the manifesto, most of them young, all members of the informal Automatiste group, led into this particular manifestation by Paul-Émile Borduas, who under the political regime of Maurice Duplessis lost his teaching job as a direct result.
We need a new manifesto and are getting ready to have one.
A new Group of Sixteen, mostly no longer young and therefore largely indifferent to authoritarian retaliation, is assembling under the leadership of figures vastly more obscure than Paul-Émile Borduas.
A new radical collage will blossom on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the old – that is, on August 9, 2023.
 |
| Agnes Laut |
We flourish a tetradical flag, blazoning TETRADS such as Knowledge + Imagination + Compassion + Humour in the cause of Prosperity + Generosity + Liberty + Security and a whole flock of other tetrambunctious desirables. In the best contemporary practice we are creating a ‘model’ to aid the thinking required.
It has been rightly said (by one Agnes Laut in 1908) that “Canada’s story is one of men and women and things doing.”
And what interesting, bold, progressive, and sometimes deplorable things we have done!
That story evolves, and must so continue. It is time for us to be DOING consistently better, for each other, for the earth, for posterity, and for ourselves.
August 9 is six months off. We will keep you informed of progress.
This letter was submitted from a piece originally published in KnICH Magazine.
