I was going through old boxes in storage and I found a printout of An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth by Bruce Mau. I found it especially inspiring during quarantine so I wanted to share my favourite points with you. Alongside them are some self-portraits I challenged myself to play around with in the spring. Some of them, I quite like how they turned out. Others were a learning experience more than anything. It was an opportunity to push myself to play without judgement so I found them fitting to share here. I hope you enjoy the manifesto.

i Allow events to change you.

You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

ii Forget about good.

Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

iii Process is more important than outcome.

When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

iv Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).

Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

v Go deep.

The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

vi Capture accidents.

The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

vii Study.

A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

viii Drift.

Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

ix Begin anywhere.

John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

xii Keep moving.

The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

xiii Slow down.

Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

xiv Don’t be cool.

Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

xvi Collaborate.

The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

xvii ____________________.

Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

xviii Stay up late.

Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.

xix Work the metaphor.

Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

xxix Think with your mind.

Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

xxxii Listen carefully.

Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

xxxiv Make mistakes faster.

This isn’t my idea – I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

xxxvii Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

xxxix Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.

Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces – what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference – the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals – but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

xlii Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history.

Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

xxxxiii Power to the people.

Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.

Those are my favourites. What did you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts below.

P.S. you can read the whole thing here (pages 5-7) if you’re interested.