Meme Manifesto
A transmedia participatory project of meme mapping
The project explores the occult meanings and communicative potentials of memetic symbology, investigating different aspects of meme culture through various media: an art book, an interactive website, a physical installation, a series of Telegram research chats, a bridge bot archive and many participative workshops.
As an emergent online language, memes have moved beyond their playful golden era to become a battleground where grassroots initiatives and spontaneous expression collide with marketing and propaganda.
Contextualising their meaning helps us resist memetic warfare and navigate deceptive narratives. Grasping their mysteries unlocks a form of digital sorcery – a language once reserved for the initiated.
The Process
While mapping the memesphere, we chose to work across multiple media, each inviting distinct forms of participation – from Telegram chats and a beta book, to an interactive website connected to a bot, a series of workshops and talks, and finally a physical installation titled The Detective Wall, accompanied by a printed guide.
We believe that memes are the latest iteration of the one true power that defines us as a species: the ability to understand, interpret, and alter our reality through linguistic and symbolic patterns of meaning.
This project seeks to represent, understand, and archive the social, cultural, and visual forces behind the global spreading of memetic culture. It is doing so in a collective way: gathering tools, methods, and points of view in order to map the infinite world of the memesphere.
The Meme is always plural, never singular. It is experienced in a context, it is enjoyed in clusters.
How it all began…
The work began in 2017 and developed in various media. The Meme Manifesto art book was written and designed by Jules Durand out of the desire to create a printed archive of good memes.
A limited edition of 3 copies only, made us realize the importance of "getting memes off the internet”.
Later on, “The Iceberg” interactive installation, inspired by the path of the meme “Iceberg Tiers Parodies”, allowed us to gather a greater part of the archive, while we were diving through ever deeper levels of memetic.
… And how we kept going
The Protocols, a series of online and offline investigative workshops and publications, developed during the pandemic, offered us the occasion to exchange lore and point of views with communities that are coming from different parts of the world and zones of the internet.
Finally “The Detective Wall”' physical installation was developed. Following a process that is inspired by the famous Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne with a nod to “Pepe Silvia Meme”, we find ourselves building an infinite conceptual map of the memesphere.
What will happen next
What we discovered is in part told in "The Detective Wall Guide". What we discovered next, while “The Detective Wall” was expanding even more, traveling through Aksiona, Werkleitz, Villa Arson and the KW Institute Museum of Contemporary Art, will be soon told in a book that has yet to come.
