Urchin Manifesto

The Evolution of the Urchin

The Urchins have been on the move for over two years, but we’ve hit a stride ever since crossing the border into cyberspace. While the audience that cyberspace provides will always be randomised and unpredictable, we knew the possibilities of performing before an invisible audience. And since we can’t see the faces in the darkened crowd, we can only assume one of two things: either nobody is watching or everybody is watching.

And so we decided that everybody is watching, and we hammered out a strident manifesto attacking today’s portraits of the artist. The dishonest, greedy, ethically compromising, Faustian artist had become the tragic and unfortunate jackass, but more so: the Mephistophelean forces that have dragged him away from integrity and self-confidence had become the goliaths against which our Urchin Movement will revolt.

It seemed clear to us. This was what we wanted to do. Our early articles were evidences of our aim. We risked sounding snobby and elitist before an audience, some of whom didn’t know us personally and therefore weren’t readily aware that we aren’t really that snobby and elitist, in order push our point across: that the masses would know what bad art is if there was more good art being made and getting the spotlight.

(Don’t get us twisted: everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but the distinguishing between bad art and good art can be more objective than one would assume. This is why we won’t even bother safeguarding the terms bad art and good art with quotation marks. We aren’t forcing anyone to agree with us. We are pushing our points, and we encourage you to push back with yours if you sincerely believe in them. Dismissing the discussion with the ‘everyone gets an opinion’ argument is just the sort of relativism we despise.)

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Any movement that attempts to fuel change must also change.

As time went on, we realised something more important. Bad art isn’t the problem. Bad problems are the problem. Most importantly, good art can help solve bad problems. (Having said that, what does bad art do but make money for nothing?) Now, there are surely some artists out there who don’t see problem-solving as their responsibility. Fine. Feel that way. But we must ask: should anyone under any sort of spotlight feel any sort of responsibility, no matter how small the spotlight or how small the responsibility? Whatever anyone says, this notion of art as social revolution is by no means a delusion of grandeur. Imagine if the most creative minds in the world worked, in some way or another, toward addressing the world’s problems. We aren’t asking artists to move mountains. Some of us, however, are going to try. This can be done in a multitude of ways. There’s a pinch of truth in the old saying: something is better than nothing.

So let that something be something!

The Revolution of the Urchin

Why should we be taken seriously, especially in this age where everyone blogs, everyone has something to say, without any credentials or anything?

While we often resist the urge to blog about bad days or the fundamental crime against physics that is Justin Bieber’s haircut, we approach the open blogosphere with a certain sense of responsibility. We will say what is on our minds and hold nothing back. Otherwise, there’d be no point in wasting your time. If you are taking the time to read what we’re saying, we will try to make it worthwhile by being honest about the things we find most important and most interesting. There is too much happening in the world to waste time discussing the mundane.

The youths of our generation possess a reputation, sometimes rightfully so, of being apathetic underachievers. Let us prove the doubters wrong! We have big dreams and big aspirations, and no one will take that away. Let us not wallow in impotent cynicism, which is what you’re left with when you let passionate anger sit out in room temperature for too long without doing anything about it.

The Urchin Movement has grown in number. What started out as three people has now expanded to include everyone who takes the time out of their day to read what we have to say. One of our greatest hopes has already been actualised: the Urchin Movement has evolved from a trio to a collective. We know there are people, of all ages, who feel the same way about certain things, and we want to reach out to the people who may also be trying to reach out to us. Together, we can continue to evolve, and through this we can grow more powerful and eventually take over the world MUAHAHA *ahem*

We want you to join us. We’re aware of the road it takes to get where we want to go. According to our GPS, there are mountains ahead – we will either drive through them or manoeuvre cunningly around them to get to the other side. There will be people along the road shouting at us, calling us names. They’ll call us young, which won’t matter to us. They’ll call us naive, but we will have done our research and will know that that’s untrue. If we were naive, we wouldn’t be doing this in the first place. They’ll call us idealistic. We’ll roll down the window and yell, ‘Yeah, so what?’

And when they got nothing left, perhaps they’ll shrug and they’ll ask, ‘So what should we call you?’ And by then, they’ll read the answer on our license plate as we drive off…