We set out with no theme and with no set format – I just cast the blankest of pages and slimmest of stipulations out into the shimmering cloud of Huddersfield's postgrad intellect and it came back with ideas clumped to it like iron filings. Much to everyone's surprise there were themes that emerged, however unintentionally, or, at least, overlaps and resemblances...

As a general rule, manifestos are written by those least capable of carrying them out. This helps explain the gap between theory and practice. The New Fordist Manifesto is a theoretical readymade, just waiting for the right context. When I came across it last year, soon after joining the recently formed Institute of Applied Cultural Economics and Sociology, I knew New Fordism’s speculative approach towards artistic production would fit perfectly with the data-driven orientation of the Institute. I soon set up the New Fordist Organization for the practical implementation of the manifesto’s ideas, hence the title of this exhibition. “We live in a time of crisis. Therefore, our art should reflect that crisis. This crisis is an economic one, therefore our reflection and response should be economic.” So starts the New Fordist Manifesto. New Fordism is an economic response in its purest form – an investment in Art Futures. This response carries with it its own politics, but one which it embeds intrinsically into the nature of its process, not gaudily externalized as “content”. New Fordism is a process-based art. This booklet is an x-ray of the works in the exhibition, through which the processes of their creation may be seen. These processes range from complex computer deconstructions of artistic methodologies into simple actions, to biomechanical approaches, to data-led ways of working. simple actions, to biomechanical approaches, to data-led ways of working.

This edition of the zine has been published to coincide with the Hague-based group Acid Police Noise Ensemble’s music theatre piece; Stockhausen Serves Terrorism, 10 Years Of Sodom and Gomorrah, which will be performed on 11 September 2011, in Nutshuis, Den Haag. Put together in collaboration with Anonymous Stateless Immigrants, it is an evening of political work analyzing 9/11 and its fall-out through Stockhausen and Pasolini, and forms the basis for the texts in the first half of the zine. However, there are also fantastic articles on Maslow, improvisation, and death, as well as a reprinted version of an extremely important, but overlooked, essay by Joseph Massad on the historico-cultural implications of the Abu-Graihb atrocities.