Immediatism

excerpts from the writings of Hakim Bey

Society only supports certain kinds of groups, the nuclear family for example, or “the people I know at my job,” because such groups are already self-alienated and hooked into the Work/Consume/Die structure. Other kinds of groups may be allowed, but will lack all support from societal structure, and 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 society itself is organized to prevent all genuine conviviality.

No sooner have a group of friends begun to visualize immediate goals realizable only thru solidarity and cooperation, when suddenly one of them will be offered a “good” job in Cincinnati 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 (i.e. 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’s sheer cosmic evil. We whip ourselves into froths of indignation over “oppression” and “unjust laws” when in fact these abstractions have little impact on our daily lives—while that which really makes us miserable goes unnoticed, written off to “busyness” or “distraction” or even to the nature of reality itself (“Well, I can’t live without a job”).

Yes, perhaps it’s true we can’t “live” without a job—although I hope we’re grown-up enough to know the difference between life and the accumulation of a bunch of fucking gadgets. Still, we must constantly remind ourselves (since our culture won’t do it for us) that this monster called WORK remains the precise and exact target of our rebellious wrath, the one single most oppressive reality we face (and we must learn also to recognize Work when it’s disguised as “leisure”).

To be “too busy” for the Immediatist project is to miss the very essence of Immediatism. To struggle to come together every Thursday night (or whatever) in the teeth of the gale of busyness, or family, or invitations to stupid parties—that struggle is already Immediatism itself. Succeed in actually physically meeting face-to-face with a group which is not your spouse-and-kids, or the “guys from my job,” or your 12-step Program—and 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 or indulging in hyperbole when we insist that meeting face-to-face is already “the revolution.” 

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I. 

All experience is mediated—by the mechanisms of sense perception, mentation, language, etc.—and certainly all art consists of some further mediation of experience.

II. 

However, mediation takes place by degrees. Some experiences (smell, taste, sexual pleasure, etc.) are less mediated than others (reading a book, looking through a telescope, listening to a record). Some media, especially “live” arts such as dance, theater, musical or bardic performance, are less mediated than others such as TV, CDs, Virtual Reality. Even among the media usually called “media,” some are more and others are less mediated, according to the intensity of imaginative participation they demand. Print and radio demand more of the imagination, film less, TV even less, VR the least of all—so far.

III. 

To say that art is commodified is to say that a mediation, or standing-inbetween, has occurred, and that this betweenness amounts to a split, and that this split amounts to “alienation.” Improv music played by friends at home is less “alienated” than music played “live” at the Met, or music played through media (whether PBS or MTV or Walkman). In fact, an argument could be made that music distributed free or at cost on cassette via mail is less alienated than live music played at some huge We Are The World spectacle or Las Vegas nightclub, even though the latter is live music played to a live audience (or at least so it appears), while the former is recorded music consumed by distant and even anonymous listeners.

IV.

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. Publicly we’ll continue our work in publishing, radio, printing, music, etc., but privately we will create something else, 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.

V. 

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 and for themselves, face-to-face and together. In this sense it is like a game, and therefore certain “rules” may apply.

VI. 

All spectators must also be performers. All expenses are to be shared, and 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, and the senses.

VII. 

Immediatism means to enhance individuals by providing a matrix of friendship, not to belittle them by sacrificing their “ownness” to group-think, leftist self-abnegation, or New Age clone-values. What must be overcome is not individuality per se, but rather the addiction to bitter loneliness which characterizes consciousness in the 21st century (which is by and large not much more than a rerun of the 19th and 20th).

VIII. 

Immediatism is not condemned to powerlessness of the world, simply because it avoids the publicity of the marketplace. “Poetic Terrorism” and “Art Sabotage” are quite logical manifestations of Immediatism.

IX. 

If busyness and fissipation are the first potential failures of Immediatism, we cannot say that its triumph should be equated with “success.” The second major threat to our project can quite simply be described as the tragic success of the project itself. Let’s say we’ve overcome physical alienation and have actually met, developed our project, and created something (a quilt, a banquet, a play, a bit of eco-sabotage, etc.). Unless we keep it an absolute secret—which is probably impossible and in any case would constitute a somewhat poisonous selfishness—other people will hear of it—and among these other people, some will be agents (conscious or unconscious, it doesn’t matter) of commodification. The Spectacle—or whatever has replaced it since 1968—is above all empty. It fuels itself by the constant Moloch-like gulping-down of everyone’s creative powers and ideas. It’s more desperate for your “radical subjectivity” than any vampire or cop for your blood. It wants your creativity much more even than you want it yourself. 

Suddenly it will appear to you (as if a demon had whispered it in your ear) that the Immediatist art you’ve created is so good, so fresh, so original, so strong compared to all the crap on the “market”—so pure—that you could water it down and sell it, and make a living at it, so you could all knock off WORK, buy a farm in the country, and do art together for-ever after. And perhaps it’s true. You could…after all, you’re geniuses. But it’d be better to fly to Hawaii and throw yourself into a live volcano. Sure, you could have success; you could even have 15 seconds on the Evening News—or a PBS documentary made on your life. Yes indeedy.

X. 

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 and burst out and permeate the other art we create, the more public and mediated art.

And we hope that the two will grow closer and closer, and eventually perhaps become one.

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I.

There are no issues. There is no such thing as sexism, fascism, speciesism, looksism, or any other “franchise issue” which can be separated out from the social complex & treated with “discourse” as a “problem.” There exists only the totality which subsumes all these illusory “issues” into the complete falsity of its discourse, thus rendering all opinions, pro & con, into mere thought-commodities to be bought & sold. And this totality is itself an illusion, an evil nightmare from which we are trying (through art, or humor, or by any other means) to awaken.

II.

As much as possible whatever we do must be done outside the psychic/economic structure set up by the totality as the permissible space for the game of art. How, you ask, are we to make a living without galleries, agents, museums, commercial publishing, the NEA, & other welfare agencies of the arts? Oh well, one need not ask for the improbable. But one must indeed demand the “impossible”—or else why the fuck is one an artist?! It’s not enough to occupy a special holy catbird seat called Art from which to mock at the stupidity & injustice of the “square” world. Art is part of the problem. The Art World has its head up its ass, & it has become necessary to disengage—or else live in a landscape full of shit.

III.

Of course one must go on “making a living” somehow—but the essential thing is to make a life. Whatever we do, whichever option we choose (perhaps all of them), or however badly we compromise, we should pray never to mistake art for life: Art is brief, Life is long. We should try to be prepared to drift, to nomadize, to slip out of all nets, to never settle down, to live through many arts, to make our lives better than our art, to make art our boast rather than our excuse.

IV.

The healing laugh (as opposed to the poisonous & corrosive laugh) can only arise from an art which is serious—serious—but not sober. Pointless morbidity, cynical nihilism, trendy postmodern frivolity, whining/bitching/moaning (the liberal cult of the “victim”), exhaustion, Baudrillardian ironic hyperconformity—none of these options is serious enough, & at the same time none is intoxicated enough to suit our purposes, much less elicit our laughter.

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