Inside Cate Blanchett's and Julian Rosefeldt collaboration in “Manifesto”

Artist and filmmaker Julian Rosefeldt in his creation of “Manifesto” presents a collage of 20th-century artistic pronouncements, reinterpreted as poetic monologues on screen by Ms. Blanchett. Its North American premiere debuted at the Park Avenue Armory on Dec. 7.

“My idea was to free all the text from the sources, from the dust of art history,” Mr. Rosefeldt said in a telephone interview with NY Times, “to make them perceivable again as fresh and eternally actual.”

The official synopsis reads: “Can history’s art manifestos apply to contemporary society? An homage to the twentieth century’s most impassioned artistic statements and innovators, from Futurists and Dadaists to Pop Art, Fluxus, Lars von Trier and Jim Jarmusch, this series of reenactments performed by Cate Blanchett explores these declarations’ performative components and political significance.”

The project premiered as a multi-screen visual installation at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in March 2015 Ms. Blanchett appears as 13 characters.

Rosefeldt and Blanchett met in Berlin during the 2010 opening of an exhibition of his work in the Berlinische Galerie.

“I like working with people that I find interesting, whatever their discipline,” Ms. Blanchett said in a telephone interview with NY Times. “I’m very visually inspired, so I’m constantly looking to artists, whether they’re working in film or paper or clay.”