Sunday
11am
A man and a women yell things across the audience. “World peace!” More solar energy and more cuddles!” "End the congestion charge!” “Given the chance the Islamic government can bring the glory back!” This is artist, Susan Hefuna’s doing. She asked a number of people in London to prove a mini manifesto and collated them all on postcards, which the actors then yelled out. My postcard read: ‘Violence and hatred’ – a nice start to a Sunday in Hyde park.

New York artist, Adam Pembleton is next with his ‘Black Dada’ manifesto. He struts purposefully around the open space, looking the audience in the eye saying: “Why do you always decided what is art, you white people?” He ends saying “sha la la la la, sha la la la la, man. Fuck you motherfuckers. Thank you,’ to big applause. Mesmerising.  

Noon
America sculptor, Jimmy Durham follows. His talk ‘no more silly hats’ offends a woman wearing a silly hat in the audience who mouths: “I’m leaving”. Jimmy rallies against nation states and the United Nations, controversially saying: “As I write, England still colonises a large part of Ireland.” He’s lucid, to the point, and very straight.

The marvellous Reinier de Graff steps up in lieu of Rem Koolhaus.  Armed with nothing but a laptop and some very well-selected slides, he slams Dubai for subsuming avant-garde architecture (Zara Hadid et al) and says it needs to stop building more shiny things, higher and higher.


2pm
Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews Berlin-based artist, Tino Sehgal. Tino refuses to present a manifesto because it is too ‘arrogant’ and instead debuts a new idea on us – that the 21st century will be more about dialogue. What with the credit crunch, we should all scale down and leave more time to think and talk, he argues.

4pm
Johnny Woo! In a gold leotard. On stage now. He reads artist, Mark Titchner’s manifesto: ‘Feel Better Now (Apathy and the New Sincerity), changing wigs and shoes as he goes. He’s the first artist this weekend to leave the pavilion and talk to the onlookers outside. He marches through the red barriers and says to each of them, without the mic ,so we can only just hear,: “Don’t listen to words. Don’t listen to words. Don’t listen to words.”


5pm
Draped in volumes of clothing and with an intricate cloth cap on her peroxide hair, K8 Hardy steps onto the podium. First thing she does? Unhook all of the Pavilion’s barriers and slam the “shocking” £20 ticket. As part of New York-bases art collective WAGE, she says she lives on £10 a day so wouldn’t even be able to afford to see herself here today. “I find it upsetting that I’m in a national park and I’m surrounded by bodyguards."
The crowd loves her.

And next, Frank Gehry’s oldest friend in the UK, Charles Jencks. He brings up a salient point– “How can you write a manifesto today that isn’t deeply ironic?” And we ponder.


Then 91-year-old life-long communist and historian, Eric Hobsbawm takes to the stage. After a brief manifesto in which he called Yves Klein “solipsistic” and Vivienne Westwood’s manifesto “attractive”, he sat down to an interview with Hans Ulrich where he praised fashion designers for their trend predictions and defended his Communist Party membership.

6pm
Uh oh, headliner, Brian Eno has just text to say he can’t make it. Instead, Hans Ulrich and a member of art collective, The Brutally Early Club read out parts of Eno’s manifesto, about a new political party called The Thank-You Club.

Now – the finale! The mighty Terence Koh, in white make-up and a Gareth Pugh jacket, tights, skirt and heel presents a manic slideshow filled with cultural ephemera. A plethora of images including newspaper headlines, care bears, gay porn, Coke bottles, fish ‘n’ chips, landscaped gardens and what look like anatomical drawings dominate the screens, as Koh narrates in his own language. Everyone is befuddled, hypnotised and flabbergasted. It’s perfect.



All Photographs: Serpentine Gallery Manifesto Marathon, 18-19 October 2008, Serpentine Gallery Pavilion designed by Frank Gehry
Photograph: Mark Blower