"New-Method" No. 34

"New-Method" No. 34

"New-Method" released our "New-Methodicist Rock-Paper-Scissors Manifesto" on September 4, 2013. The same day marked our third year anniversary.
We introduce No. 34 of our email bulletin with our works and guest contributions. This issue features Manabu Matsushita for the contributor, a gallerist who has contributed for our bulletin twice in No. 1 and No. 23.
From this issue on, the bulletin "New-Method" becomes bimonthly. The next issue will be published on December 4, 2013.

[Contribution]

New-Method Do Not Think
Manabu Matsushita (Gallerist)

Despite its unique and enigmatic presence, New-Method is nothing experimental. They state a certain idea and just do it without any ambitious assumption or reflection at all. It is audience who assume or reflect what they do. New-Method is a doer rather than a thinker. They don't think but just utilize existing categories. We audience often forget it perhaps because we think so much that we confuse what we think and what they do.

Now, let's think about their latest manifesto. On their three year anniversary September 4, 2013, New-Method released the fourth manifesto "New Method Rock-Paper-Scissors Manifesto" that simply describes the rules of Rock-Paper-Scissors (hereinafter RPS). They also actually performed RPS shortly before and after the release. Here is a notable difference from the previous three tautological and self-contained manifestos in that this fourth manifesto accompanies with corresponding practices. In this sense, the fourth manifesto is closer to their regular works and even seems as if denying the concept of manifesto in their activities.

Then, how did they put it in practice? On August 31, as the closing act of Hayashi Kanae Takeshi's "Buru Bijutsu-kan Ru [Musee de la Bleu]" show at Bar Mudai in Ebisu, Tokyo, New-Method made RPS matches every 10 minutes, resulting in 4 wins for Hirama, 7 for Baba and 2 for Kaido. On September 9, as a performance for Koen [park] Concert No.50 organized by Takefumi Naoshima in the exhibition space of Yuhei Saito's "Robagun [Donkies]" at Pool in Sakuradai, Tokyo, they made RPS matches twice or three times in every single second for 10 minutes, leaving a number of uncounted results that must have been rounded mostly even due to the law of large numbers.

In a way, one can think of uneven distribution in the first case and convergence in the second as together suggesting inevitable randomness in our finite world, which will ever revolve around the ideal world but never be able to rest there. This gap is an essential relation between theory and practice, common to all of their works and alien to the nature of their previous manifestos. The fourth manifesto is suspended between their works and manifestos. Still, it can't be true or false in the end because New-Method still do not think by themselves.

[Web Works of the New-Methodicists]

[Information]

- "New-Methodicist Rock-Paper-Scissors Manifesto"  http://7x7whitebell.net/new-method/manifesto_rps_e.html

- "New-Method in pool"  http://7x7whitebell.net/new-method/pool_e.html

- "New-Method" official webpage has been updated.  http://7x7whitebell.net/new-method/

- Takahiro Hirama has updated his website.  http://qwertyupoiu.archive661.com/

- Shogo Baba has updated his website.  http://7x7whitebell.net/

- Masaru Kaido has updated his website.  http://masarukaido.com/

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[Editor's Note]

"New-Method" had their third year anniversary on September 4, 2013. I hope you'll keep on watching their activities. (M)