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IMMEDIATISM

                                                January 16, 2010
                                      Released: May      5, 2012

In Hakim Bey's 1992 essay
"Immediatism", he goes step by            This is the title essay of
step through his feelings about           a published collection.
"mediation"-- the creation of             An alternate collection is
distance between artist and               title: "Radio Sermonettes"
audience-- and he asserts that
commodification adds still
another layer... This is another
example of someone expressing
resentment at how fast                  FAST_MEDIA
innovations are co-opted and
mass marketed.

He comes to a conclusion that in
addition to whatever mediated work    And in point of fact, after publishing
he may do (writing, music), there     "Immediatism" he all but dropped out.
must be something else, something     There are few published works from him
done in private, in secret, art       now, he stopped appearing on the Moorish
done on the level of spontaneous      Orthodox radio show...  I see there are
play between friends.                 occasional blog posts from him (?!), but
                                      not many.
      One of his examples is
      just cooking a meal:

      "Thus a good meal could be an
       Immediatist art project,
       especially if everyone
       present cooked as well as ate."

         No doubt Hakim has
         a point here...       Bruce Sterling's
                               satirizes this near the
                               end of "Holy Fire": a
                               woman rationalizes
                               taking long walks as a
                               revolutionary act:          A moment's thought
                               "dropping off the grid".    shows that really
                                                           she's just someone
                                                           who likes going
                                                           for walks-- but
                                                           radicals like to
                                                           believe that
                                                           everything they do
                                                           is radical.

       I suggest that Bey made a wrong turn
       or rather, missed a possible branch:
                                                 
           Earlier in the essay, he does concede that     
           there are different media that seem less       
           distancing than others.  He uses the           
           paradoxical example of tape trading being      
           more personally connecting than performing     
           "live" for a stadium audience.                 
                                                          
           To me, the, uh, immediate question then is    
           among the new options available to us now,
           which ones are more "immediate".

              Is the web immediate?

              Does this vary for different         Is there something
              sites?  How would you then           even more immediate
              design one to maximize this?         that we haven't
                                                   invented yet?


   At the close, he dismisses
   70s and 80s zine art as
   being too distant, but this
   is grossly unconvincing.

   Try reading a few issues of
   "Doris", and then tell me that
   that art form lacks intimacy.



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