immediatism

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immediatism

CONVIVIALITY AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PATH

Fully realizing that any art 'manifesto' written today can only stink of the same bitter irony it seeks to oppose, we nevertheless declare without hesitation (without too much thought) the founding of a 'movement': IMMEDIATISM.

We feel free to do so because we intend to practice Immediatism in secret, in order to avoid any contamination of mediation. Nowadays anything which evades the idiot gaze of publicity is already virtually secret. Most modern people seem unable to believe in the reality of something they never see on television—therefore to escape being televisualized is already to be quasi-invisible.

Publicly we’ll continue our work in publishing, radio, printing, music, etc., but privately we will create something else, a secret society, something to be shared freely but never consumed passively, something which can be discussed openly but never understood by the agents of alienation, something with no commercial potential yet valuable beyond price, something occult yet woven completely into the fabric of our everyday lives.

Immediatism is not a movement in the sense of an aesthetic program. It depends on situation, not style or content, message or School. It may take the form of any kind of creative play which can be performed by two or more people, by & for themselves, face-to-face & together. In this sense it is like a game, & therefore certain 'rules' may apply.

All spectators must also be performers. All expenses are to be shared, & all products which may result from the play are also to be shared by the participants only (who may keep them or bestow them as gifts, but should not sell them). The best games will make little or no use of obvious forms of mediation such as photography, recording, printing, etc., but will tend toward immediate techniques involving physical presence, direct communication, & the senses.

Finally, we expect that the practice of Immediatism will release within us vast storehouses of forgotten power, which will not only transform our lives through the secret realization of unmediated play, but will also inescapably well up & burst out & permeate the other art we create, the more public & mediated art. And we hope that the two will grow closer & closer, & eventually perhaps become one.

immediatism

What follows is almost entirely stolen from Hakim Bey's little book titled: Immediatism starting on page 19, which we find to be radically relevant to the lifestyle of a Possibilitator creating Possibility in today's world.

'Immediatism' means to enhance individuals by providing a matrix of friendship, not to belittle them by sacrificing their 'ownness' to group-think or to New Age clone-values. What must be overcome is not individuality per se, but rather our addiction to bitter loneliness which characterizes consciousness in the 21th century (which is not much more than a re-run of the 20th century).

Applied immediatism looks like a meeting with no agenda, a potluck dinner, an open-mike stage, an evening of improvisational theater, or a hike where staying connected as one group has a higher priority than reaching the goal. As your appetite for the energetic food which is co-created through immediatism grows, your immediatist spaces extend over longer periods of time as Temporary Autonomous Zones, festivals, next culture communities, bridge-houses, and eventually nanonations (nations made up of 3 or more initiated adults with a common context).

There are three tactical dangers facing any immediatist group ('immediate' meaning 'at once', and also meaning 'without mediation', which means 'without electronic interface', in person, in the present, together in the flesh).

The first danger is capitalistic busyness (slavery). The second is the success of the project. And if you get through the busyness and become successful, then you will be seen- And if you are seen, your freedom will be regarded as strangeness that scares people enough they must put you away.

Capitalism only supports certain kinds of groups, for example, the nuclear family, or 'the people I know at my job', because such groups are already self-alienated and hooked into the Work / Consume / Die life-plan. Other kinds of groups may be allowed in capitalist society, but will lack all support, and will thus find themselves facing grotesque challenges and difficulties which appear under the guise of 'bad luck'.

The first and most innocent-seeming obstacle to any immediatist project will be the 'busyness' or 'need to make a living' faced by each of its associates. However there is no real innocence here – only our profound ignorance of the ways in which capitalism is organized to prevent all genuine conviviality.

No sooner have a group of friends begun to visualize immediate goals realizable only through solidarity and cooperation, when suddenly one of them will be offered a 'good' job in New York, or teaching English in Taiwan – or else have to move back to California to care for a dying parent. Or else they'll lose the 'good' job they already have and be reduced to a state of misery which precludes their very enjoyment of the group's project or goals (e.g. they'll become 'depressed'). At the most mundane-seeming level, the group will fail to agree on a day of the week for meetings because everyone is 'busy'. But this is not mundane. It is sheer cosmic evil.

We whip ourselves into a conceptual fury about 'oppression of the lower classes' or 'unjust laws' or 'economic inequalities' when in fact these abstractions have little impact on our daily lives – while that which really makes us miserable goes unnoticed, explained to ourselves as 'busyness' or 'distractions', or even understood as the nature of reality itself ("Well, I can't 'live' without a job!")

To be 'too busy' for the immediatist project is to miss the very essence of immediatism. To struggle to come together every Thursday evening (or whatever), in the teeth of the gale of busyness, or family, or invitations to stupid parties - that struggle is already immediatism. If you succeed in meeting face-to-face with a group which is not your spouse-and-kids, or 'the guys from work', or your 12-Step Program, you have already achieved virtually everything immediatism yearns for. An actual project will arise almost spontaneously out of this successful slap-in-the-face of the social norm of alienated boredom.

Outwardly, of course, the project will seem to be the group's purpose, its motive for coming together – but in fact the opposite is true. We're not kidding when we insist that meeting-face-to-face is already the revolution. Attain it and the creativity part comes naturally; like 'the kingdom of heaven', it will be given to you. ["*Wherever three or more are gathered in 'my name'... there will arise the [Youtube wULeXeQkqd0
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