Manifestos make statements. Precisely. Tangibly.
Manifestos make assertions in academic contexts where statements can not be posed without reservations. Manifestos create rules in places that commonly do not require specific laws. That is how famous manifestos have framed the activities
of whole groups of artists, scientists or activists. 1
Wherever commandments are being formulated, or discourses are created from claims, a critique is demonstrated, a phenomenon exhibited, controversies provoked, exclusions and inclusions evoked—all of these actions go beyond the customs of analytical thinking to where insights are presumed and manifested. This happens in a forward leaning, programmatic and subjective manner.
The manifestos gathered here are an experiment aimed at taming, averting and positioning the unhinged concept of the speculative turn that has found followers imbued by an almost prophetic zeal. The manifestos strive to achieve that goal by stating just one assertion. These assertions can be ironic or humorous, serious, personal, obvious or just banal. This is because these manifestos are as diverse as the cultural backgrounds of the students at the University of the Arts Bremen that have met at the Seminar for Media Theory held at the International Master Degree Course for Digital Media, where they authored these manifestos.

1 Just to mention the Manifesto of the Communist Party (Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, 1848),
as well as the Manifesto of Futurism (Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, 1908), the Surrealist
Manifesto (André Breton, 1924) or A Cyborg Manifesto (Donna Haraway, 1985), as some of
the most well known and influential examples.

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