Website Manifesto
...a living document subject to encouraged to change/evolve/grow
...last breathed into 2 months, 1 week ago...
- I want to be in dialogue with my website, my work, and the people who find it. Not have it be just a space where I publish posts and art, but a living work itself. I want to engage with and collaborate with it. I want to inform it and for it to inform me.
- This website is not a holding space for presenting work. This website is the work.
- I see this website as medium, as container, as partner, as poem, as participant, as art, as observer, as receiver, as comforter, as challenger, as limiter, as enabler, as artistic practice, as scroll, as...almost anything but "a website."
- I'm interested in playing within (while challenging) the constraints of this website; I want to stretch the bounds of its HTML...see how much it can hold.
- I want to transparently share and expose the process of my creation/writing/art rather than just display an "end product". Because I find that the process—the mess, the inner struggles, the uncertainty, the fears, the pain, the
over-thinkingdeep considerations—is far more interesting and relatable than any polished, well-worded work ever is. - I want to avoid nicheifying myself and my work—trapping myself in any one "frame." I want this website to hold space for work that is joyous, irreverent, snarky, deadly serious, utterly frivolous, poignant, pointless, labored over, shat out in a sitting, inspiring, helpful, self-indulgent, humorous, biting, sarcastic, empathetic, armored, vulnerable, and ALL THE THINGS I am and can be all at once. I want this website to reflect (as much as a website can) the fullness of a human. (No pressure, website...)
- I want my writing and art to help other people. I want to put into words and form what so many of us struggle to voice—to help others feel seen, heard, understood, validated, and not fucking alone.
I’m self-consciously aware that at this point in my life, my work will largely be self-focused as I get back in touch with myself and my long-stifled creative practice. As "gross" as it sometimes feels, I want to give myself permission to post what may feel like self-indulgent navel-gazing. (After writing explicitly for others for so long, I lost myself…and with that loss, even my "work explicitly for other people" stopped connecting with other people—precisely because I was entirely absent from it. So, there’s likely to be an over-correction as I lean back into myself.)While I’m aware my often hyper-self-reflective work can be viewed (especially by me) as self-indulgent navel-gazing—or relegated to/pigeonholed within the frame of a "personal blog"—I relate to this space as an artistic practice; this is not my full body of work, but my work has always used my full body. - I want to use this space to connect.
Even if only with myself.I deeply want to connect with others as I connect with myself. - I do not want to lose myself in my effort to connect with others.
- I want my website to be a place where I lean into and embrace the parts of myself I judge/abhor/avoid/attempt to erase the most. I want to come closer to what I fear most—to approach what I've locked away for so long with curiosity and compassion. I want to refuse to turn away.
- I do NOT want to be a brand.
- I want to be afraid of sharing too much, and do it anyway.
📧 Connect
why "last breathed into"?
I view this manifesto as a living document. As such, I wanted to prominently display the time since it was last updated. I drew the terminology "last breathed into" from Laurel Schwulst's inspiring essay on what websites can be, wherein she writes:"Today more than ever, we need individuals rather than corporations to guide the web’s future. The web is called the web because its vitality depends on just that—an interconnected web of individual nodes breathing life into a vast network. This web needs to actually work for people instead of being powered by a small handful of big corporations..." (emphasis added)
I'm quite taken with the concept of each of us breathing life into our websites—and how our collective breaths expand outwards, intermingling in beautifully unpredictable ways, powering the very web itself. A human web. Coding dusted with the traces of our breath...