Immediacy, Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism

The dangers of immediacy: why speed, flow, and direct expression now dominate cultural style

Contemporary cultural style rejects mediation in favor of direct access, extreme affect, and rapid uptake. These are values it borrows from the economic conditions of “disintermediation”: cutting out the middleman. Like Uber, but for art. Immediacy names this style to make sense of what we lose when the contradictions of 21st century capitalism demand that art pretend it isn’t.

Smearing our noses in realness seems to be the only goal of much of contemporary culture, and that goal synchs with the economic imperative to intensify circulation when production stagnates. Circulation strives to be instantaneous, with “flow” the ultimate 21st century buzzword, but these speedy gears grind art down to the nub. And the bad news is, the political turmoil and social challenges we face, climate crisis foremost among them, require more rather than less mediation. Collective will, inspiring ideas, and deliberate construction are the only way out, but our dominant style undoes them.

Considering original streaming tv, popular fiction, artworld trends, and academic theories, Immediacy explains the recent obsession with immersion, authenticity, and total transparency, and it points to alternative forms of representation in photography, tv, novels, and constructive theory, that prioritize distance, impersonality, and big ideas instead.