“The enema academia didn’t know it needed.”
Lanfranco Aceti
ABSTRACT
This manifesto-essay is both an intervention and an indictment—unapologetically necessary, like all vital acts of cleansing, and just as unwelcome in polite company. While some may find pleasure in dwelling within the unspeakable, E.N.E.M.A., the Encyclopedia of New and Experimental Media Arts, demands more: a confrontation with the physiological, allegorical, intellectual, and creative meanings embedded in its name.
Rejecting the stifling taxonomies and pseudo-scientific veneers that dominate contemporary academia and curatorial practice, this work returns to the traditions of Italian and Greek philosophical inquiry—fluid, probing, and unafraid to confront uncomfortable truths. In doing so, it dismantles the sterile structures that claim to represent reality but instead obscure it beneath a façade of authority.
This is a manifesto and an essay, but it is also a provocation. It explores what can be said and what should be said but remains unspeakable in academia, the curatorial world, and the ever-murkier realm of new media and experimental arts. E.N.E.M.A. is a political act, unapologetically entwined with the emotional and intangible forces that make art, art.
Ultimately, it asks this: in a world that demands conformity while masking its incoherence with polished jargon and institutional pretense, can we challenge institutional oppression with an E.N.E.M.A.? For decades, institutions, academia, the publishing industry, and politicians have administered their own forms of forced enemas, imposing ideologies that constrict creativity and intellectual autonomy. Perhaps it is now time to turn the tables and deliver one ENEMA back to them—an Encyclopedia of New and Experimental Media Arts that defies their authority with incisive critique, radical creativity, and unrelenting precision.
KEYWORDS: Experimental Media Arts, Artistic Interventions and Critique, Taxonomy and Creative Freedom, Institutional Power Dynamics, Philosophical Traditions in Art, Cleansing and Allegory in Art, Political Acts in Contemporary Media, Encyclopedic Methodologies in Art, Critique of Academia and Publishing, Emotion and Intangibility in Art Creation
Introduction of the E.N.E.M.A.
E.N.E.M.A. is not here to clean up the mess of academia—it’s here to flush it out, exposing its stench and its brilliance in equal measure.
TO BE CONTINUED…
ENDNOTES
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IMAGES
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CITATION
CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE
A version of this manifesto and essay is scheduled for publication.
Lanfranco Aceti, E.N.E.M.A.: Encyclopedia of New and Experimental Media Arts (London, New York, and Rome: OCR/Passero Productions, FORTHCOMING).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With Gratitude
I extend my deepest gratitude to Professor Paul Thomas for his steadfast support, even in the face of my occasional descents into madness. To Dr. Vince Dziekan, I am equally indebted for his ability to grasp—if not all, then certainly some—of the reasoning behind my methods and motives.
