Introduction to a SLOW FUTURE and the SLOW FUTURE MANIFESTO
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We did not close our eyes that night my friends; intoxicated as we were from the glorious perspectives offered by the near Future, our near Future. Modern Times were born. It was no longer the time for never ending cautious reasoning and speculations. We said farewell to that dusty old world that we had abandoned to its long decay. The new world was there, down at our feet, open, unlimited, waiting.
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Speed would rule, and we jumped into the speed. Wildly embracing the possibilities of modern technology and the flight of industry, we would become the rulers, the rulers of speed. And if we were the rulers of speed, we were also the masters of time. Time was defeated. We could live thousands of lives in one. Neither could something hold us, nor resist us, nor stop us. We had conquered life itself, we had mastered the supreme weapon, the time weapon.
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Nature had made us permanently unsatisfiable. Thanks to speed and to the machines, we could finally fully exert our insatiable Will for power. From now on, we would expand, conquest, submit, destroy, transform and control the world as we pleased, inexorably, indefinitely… Speed had given us the most extraordinary present ! We could do what we wanted to do, go where we wanted to go, be who we wanted to be! Technology had liberated us from all human contingencies and we challenged the whole wide world! We were the living, and we were free.
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So proud and conscious of the evidence of our own superiority, our forces relieved from exhausting labour, our minds emancipated from obsolete moralism, we redesigned the world. To us, the strong and the fast, to us the continents and the seas, the nations and the peoples, to us the air, to us, the sky and the stars… We shaped the world for speed. Our machines were made for speed, our cities were build for speed.
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All we created was in the image of asserted virility. And this meant the end of the small and little, the end of the curves. To win speed we had to earn in efficiency and productivity. Everything got gigantic, there came the reign of the straight line, of the right angle, of the horizontal and of the vertical. We had to go always higher, further, faster. Everything had to be within our reach. We built railways, we built highways, bridges to cross all obstacles. We shot rockets into the cosmos, levitated in space and even we, or our machines, walked on other asters. We did not build one cathedral but erected thousands of skyscrapers; as much signs of the times. Our society was building, hurrying, herself for speed.
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We invented thousands of machines too. Speeding machines, travel machines, sewing machines, machines to make machines, machines to repair machines, machines to destroy machines, even thinking machines and also killing machines. All opposition was destroyed. Competition is strong, and war became industrial. Billions died and the human being, the individual, if he ever was, no longer counts at all.
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Everything went quicker and quicker, even faster than we ever thought it could. All of us were acting from and for the Machine… We were all addicted to the machine. If sometimes a machine is dysfunctioning, we just replace it, immediately. If one of us is dysfunctioning, we replace them, immediately. We are living for the deadlines, living to function. We are not even slave to the machines, we have become wheels of the machine*, or fuel for the machine**…We do not rage against the machine or with the machine, because we become one, we are one with the Machine, we are the machine ourselves!
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And this my friends, this is not the exalted dream of doomed artists predicting in the smog of their delirium the Future turning into the worst of the Nightmares… This, this is today, this is the present time, this is the so called Contemporaneity!
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The Human being, in the name of an easy satisfaction of his primary desires, has totally abdicated his elementary freedom, and thinking to reach autonomy and independence in his legitimate pursuit of happiness has instead through the fetishism of Speed and Productivity landed in the state of becoming a standardized product of the machine himself, at the price of sacrificing all his time and energy and productivity to the Machine herself. The tribute to pay this artificial freedom with was time, all of our time, time was money, but money was not time... Time has not been killed, and we became clock machines!
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We have grown all over. A place without any trace of human activities is nowhere to be found. Even in the most remote areas we are reminded of man’s presence by the chemtrails in the sky. Crisscrossing airplanes leaving behind their tails of burned kerosene, covering the planet with a closing web of poisoning gasses. Our wild embrace has turned into a strangling suffocation of the earth. A delicate balance from where the precious ecological diversity has evolved, the richness in natural appearances, it is all in jeopardy. The world is sick from industry like a growing gangrene expanding its destructiveness on a large scale. The world is sick from progress, from the belief of being on track, from the human to human conviction that there is a solution to everything. We take technology, industry and machinery for granted. From within the stream of speed there seems to be no option than to go with the flow. But we do mistake that flow terribly, this mechanical stream isn’t the flow of life. The speed is blurring our vision…
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So what has become Art in all this ? So called Art today has become nothing, nothing but a machine, an iron lung breathing machine, holding us dreaming in a state of happy vegetative narcosis. Art has become Entertainment, Art is relegated to Communication, Art is supposed, in the best case, to help us Thinking, similar in this to the “dopolavoro” meant for the elevation of the masses, Art is there to make us believe we can be forever young cruel innocent gods playing in the artificial Eden of Contemporary Consumption…Meanwhile, the strings are tightened.
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So called Art has become, like us, the Machine. And Art is today ruled by the same rules as us; the rules of speed, the rules of utilitarianism, the rules of production and consumption. All creative forces, all energies, all artistic insurrections are immediately turned and recycled into new icons of the Society, of the Show, and condemned to become only trends which, within the shortest length of time, must leave place for the next trends. Art is merchandise, and Art is on the market, subject to the same fluctuations and crisis as those of the stock exchange…
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So called Artists in the Society of Speed, like any other beings, are no longer busy with creation, but with the despairing and dispiriting routine of mass-production, deadlines, and strategies of communication. This mechanism is lethal to any process of true creation. The society and culture of speed leave absolutely no place for diversity and no space for any art which does not conform to her rules, goals and modus of expression and production. This is the reign of the mass and of mass propaganda… This is the reign of audio-visuals machines.
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We ended up in this mess and madness of the masses. The amount of information we consume daily, is indigestible. The everyday news with its dozens of devastating facts; it is too much to swallow, and it is too disgusting to even try to sense the taste of it. So instead of taking in the truth of our actual state of existence, we dismiss it. With a polite “oh how terrible” we send back the dishes full of horror, to let it be a left over, unnoticed, untouched. And on we go, running around to fill the empty stomach in our minds. We do find seemingly fulfilling substitutes, this is fast food and easy thinking, containing lots of hot air, having hardly any substance. It may smell reasonably good because of its fake essences, it may look healthy because of the manipulated triggering packages, still, it is empty. By dismissing the actual reality, replacing it with loads of wishful satisfactions, we continue the mental hunger, asking for more, wanting more, taking more, and keep taking more and more. So that the machine continues the spinning. Consuming itself.
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So I tell you, we were drunk my friends, drunk of our will to power and when we thought we had defeated “mythology and the mystic ideal… None of it was true. Unconsciously we were rebuilding the ancient myth of the Golem, and shaping of a new Mystic, The Mystic of Speed. We were the sorcerer’s apprentice, and in our immense ignorance we had released uncontrollable forces. Our Icarus dream is touching the end. By itself… or by ourselves?
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It is high time to hit the brake, to take a break. To take a stand-still. To let slow be the mode, so the flow can go at its own pace to make space for us to grow.
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This is why we, the Altercontemporary and Alterfuturist say with our SLOW FUTURE MANIFESTO
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1) After 100 years of modern and contemporary history conforming in all facts and points to the Futurists visions, the failure and collapsing of the productivist and industrial world is obviously approaching with all of its consequences. There will be No Future, or Slow Future.
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2) The times are changing. Art, Culture and Society as well. Slow Future is proclaiming to the world the End of the Fetishism of Speed and of the Industrial, Productivist and Futurist inheritance. This is the glorious dawn of the New Time, the New Culture and the New Art; the Art of the Slow Future.
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3) We venerate the supreme beauty of the living, the living that lives. Without this nothing would be possible, not even our most extravagant inventions, dreams and creations. The living that lives, fruit of the very long and very slow Evolution of Nature, of which we, and all of the 'living' on this Earth, are the incarnation. We do affirm that the living in all its diversity is in magnificence superior to any racing and roaring car or any Victory of Samothrace.
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4) Art and Poetry in all of their forms and Culture are also the fruits of a long and slow evolution. Culture is a collective process, born of the creativity of individuals. The contemporary cult of speed is certainly culturally fatal to any elaborated form of expression, and eliminates any kind of cultural diversity or individual creation… A Culture which would abolish individuality, or the individual and his creativity and fix the norms of all of her products is dead to evolution, and consequently will sooner or later be a dead culture.
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5) It’s up to any individual, artist or not, to take his own responsibility towards mainstream Culture, to express himself and to have the courage or to take the risk of facing Contemporary Culture and Industrial Society by any means he finds necessary. It is now crucial for any individual that he recovers his freedom of expression and deeds, and that he regains the time he needs for a real blossoming. Crucial to Art, for Culture, for any artist, any being, is that the time for contemplation is regained in the living or artistic process. Contemplation is a key-concept for any creator, and therefore time is required. Spontaneous interventions, organic realisations, natural and surrounding compositions, as well as the use of contemplation shall be essential elements of our Art and Poetry. Different in essence, they all open immense fields of autonomy for the artist by their common denominator, the re-appropriation of time.
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6) In the abundance of water, the fools are thirsty***. The Industry and Speed Culture has produced mountains of obsolete machines, structures and products. We are born into this society, into these surroundings, its up to us to adapt our needs and to adapt this specific environment to our needs. All of the modern environment shall be readjusted, without new damages for the living. And everywhere man shall succeed in transforming his environment into a sustainable one again; there shall be beauty! Everywhere men shall be reconciled with Nature, man shall be reconciled with himself, and this shall be beauty…
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7) As soon as we shall give time to time, we naturally will spend ourselves with much ardour, splendour, and generosity, to swell the enthusiastic fervour of the primordial elements.
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8) When we finally have understood the futility of speed and the enslavery by machines, we will have a clear view of what we actually are doing. But this mind; so very used to be in constant movement, will quickly take that new view as a new subject for its ongoing juggling commercial activities. So we will keep watching it and we will keep hitting the brake! We shall turn the tide, change the course!
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9) We are stepping away from linear movement, because life is much more than that. Life is an all-encompassing happening. From now on we decide: We will not go anywhere. We have no goal, no destination, nor an end in mind, so we will not be blind to the present moment.
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10) We will recycle, we will trade fair, and we will treat the living with care. Because Ecology is the only sustainable Hygiene for Humanity.
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11) And when the machine doesn’t do it for us anymore, we will learn to sing again. When the machine doesn’t do it for us anymore we will learn to imagine again. As the machine doesn’t do it for us anymore, we do learn to think again. We do learn to feel again, for the machine doesn’t shape our sensations and emotions anymore. All of the nightbirds shall live again in daylight, no longer made afraid by the howling of the machines. We will sing of the multicolored, polyphonic tides of evolution in the new environments. We will sing the peace of old shipyards and closed down factories, where poets and artists meet to reinvent life, to make life better than art****, to declare the new Era; The Age of the Slow Future.
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It is from the West that we launch through the world this voluntarily controversial manifesto of ours. With it, today, we establish AlterContemporaneity and AlterFuturism, the Slow Futurism. Because we want to free the Art, Culture, Society and the Living from the holy rules of Industry, Market and Technocracy. For too long the industrialized world made the whole planet suffer using its productivist ideology, by its trash, and its irresponsible behavior. We mean to free her from the numberless factories and machineries that cover us as if she was nothing but a junkyard.
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For too long was Art but an exact reflection of the Wests inanity and sterility. Life, like Art, knows no masters. Life like Art, ought not to be taught, but to be lived! Art is everywhere, not in the museums. So we shall fill them with a sample of man’s productivist madness and dedicate them to a fine collection of all the trash and crazy machines that happen to be unrecyclable, and when we no longer really know what else we could intelligently form with it, it will be exhibited to the next generations so that they can clearly see the pretentions and ultimate arrogance, the capricious childish behavior of our illustrious predecessors.
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And we, who we are?
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We are the others. We did not fit into the mould. We were not malleable enough. Maybe a little too soft. Maybe a little too hard. Maybe a little too stiff. Or a little twisted. Some kind of a rebel? Some kind of… unusual. Or just a little too fragile. Or simply a little too slow. Or was it just… different.
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Who we are?
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We are the useless, we are the forgotten, the ones nobody waits for. We are the lost generation, we are the leftovers. The neglected, the rejected, we are the dropouts of Speed Culture.
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Who are we?
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We were born in an industrial society. And then the big breakdown started. All around us, the earth was spotted with plastic, glass, metal, ...and on the flea market of our life was to be found thousands of useless objects… Just like us… We were born in trash …But we have our hands, our bodies, our brains, the city fringe and all the time in the world... From all of this, we make our creations, experimenting, assembling in a long and slow process. Oh no, not for the gallery, not for the dancehall, not for the museums, nor for the collectors, but simply for ourselves. Oh yes, time for contemplation and for maturation we have… Our life is for us… And we live marvels, at least, in our eyes.
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Who we are then!
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We know well who we are. We are nothing. Nothing but the grass blade on the railway****…Nothing but the dewdrop rusting the steel. Nothing but the grain of sand that jams the hell’s machine… We are nothing, nothing but the living, The Living that Lives; Of which we all are made, of which all seeds are made, the living seeds, the evolution seeds, the transformation seeds, the transmutation seeds, the seeds thrown on the path, the seeds that paves the path, the Path of the Slow Future. We all are the seeds, the Seeds of the Slow Future.
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So today, from that path, standing at our own two feet, we declare an end to the Age of Speed.
Go slow… and behold… to be the living that lives.
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©2009 Pierre Mansire & Kirsten Zwijnenburg
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February 2009, The Netherlands
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* Hannah Ahrendt
** Carlton Douglas Ridenhour
*** Nesta Robert Marley
**** Robert Filliou
***** Brigitte Fontaine