{"id":26,"date":"2021-09-09T17:21:05","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T16:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pauseforthought.net\/?post_type=entry&p=26"},"modified":"2021-09-13T16:02:57","modified_gmt":"2021-09-13T15:02:57","slug":"doing-deceleration","status":"publish","type":"entry","link":"https:\/\/pauseforthought.net\/entry\/doing-deceleration\/","title":{"rendered":"Doing Deceleration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Struck by some of the resonances and connections between the Pause for Thought<\/em> project and a conference I co-organised with Henk Slager called Doing Deceleration<\/em> (4th July 2017), hosted by Nottingham Trent University and Nottingham Contemporary in conjunction with Slager\u2019s exhibition, Exhausted Academies<\/em> (30th June\u20135th July, 2017), I thought it might be interesting to share an abridged version of my introduction to the conference as a reflection.<\/p>\n

Doing Deceleration<\/p>\n

It might be tempting to read \u2018doing deceleration\u2019 as an invitation to relax or chill out, to \u2018down tools\u2019, to stop doing. Or else, it could be conceived as little more than an on-trend marketing slogan, part of the wider mainstream wellbeing economy; perhaps, even cynically as just another species of leisure around which the burgeoning \u2018slow\u2019 industries of luxury-detox retreats, spa-days and \u2018lite\u2019 mindfulness lunchtimes \u2013 alongside the rise of various apps to simplify, calmify or even happify \u2013 are already pitched.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, in the key of Martin Herbert\u2019s recent publication, Tell Them I Said No<\/em> (2016), doing deceleration might be taken as a radical withdrawal from or even antagonism to the art world and its institutions. He explores different practices for \u2018positioning oneself somewhere on the axis of absenting\u2019 (12) from the tactical withdrawal of artists such as Marcel Duchamp to the \u2018absconding manifestoes\u2019 of Cady Noland; from the silence and self-containment of Trisha Donnelly to the conceptual acts of artists like Stanley Brouwn or Tehching Hsieh. For Herbert, dropping out can be a means of critique or negation whereby \u2018full withdrawal registers as exasperated reaction to the intolerability of the art world [\u2026] to profiteering, the presence of repellent personalities, and neon egos\u2019 (13). More affirmatively, it can also \u2018constitute an example of what\u2019s possible, when you\u2019re not terrified by the attention economy\u2019 (14) \u2013 that insidious fear of missing out. Significantly, Herbert differentiates between the \u2018being present\u2019 demanded by the contemporary art world (the pressures of showing up, of self-promotion and over-sharing) and a withdrawal of self-yielding heightened states of awareness, attention, immersion, and absorption (74).<\/p>\n

Doing deceleration<\/em> is less a call to \u2018slow down\u2019, retreating from the process of production as such, than to conceive new relations between acceleration and deceleration, activity and rest. Hartmut B\u00f6hme argues that we need a \u2018new wisdom that does not pit speed and slowness against each other\u2019 (1). Speed itself is not to blame but rather the restlessness, carelessness, inconsiderateness, vagueness, negligence, imprudence, impatience, and hurry that result when haste \u2018tears us away from the present toward a destination\u2019 (2). According to B\u00f6hme, we have \u2018invested in tempo without ever having received the returns of slowness [\u2026] the more that speed has become the domineering imperative of all life\u2019s activities, the less time we have\u2019 (2). The requirement to do more and more can result in a reality of less and less, the cultivation of superficial engagement overriding the possibility of deep, sustained immersion, attention, and absorption. So, how might we disrupt the impinging pressures of acceleration and proliferation that arguably underpin our contemporary culture of immediacy and urgency, with its privileging of\u00a0multitasking, perpetual readiness, and \u2018just-in-time\u2019 production?<\/p>\n

Henk Slager\u2019s exhibition Exhausted Academies<\/em> takes one of its cues from philosopher Byung-Chul Han, who diagnoses our contemporary existence as marked by a \u2018violence of positivity\u2019, derived from overproduction, overachievement, and overcommunication, alongside an excess of stimuli and information, resulting in a radical change to our \u2018structure and economy of attention\u2019, and an inevitable rise in exhaustion, fatigue, and burnout (7). Han argues that we are no longer just the \u2018obedient-subjects\u2019 of a \u2018disciplinary\u2019 or even \u2018control society\u2019 (modelled on the negativity of prohibition); instead, we have become endlessly self-motivated \u2018achievement-subjects\u2019. Whilst a \u2018can do\u2019 or \u2018anything\u2013is\u2013possible\u2019 attitude is no bad thing in itself, for Han, our attachment to the\u00a0vita activa<\/em>\u00a0(or active life) has escalated towards a state of hyperactive passivity, creating an imperative to work.\u00a0What then for the maker of art-works \u2013 or even artist-educator \u2013 whose work is art: how to distinguish the debasing of life subsumed by work, from the critical politics of a lifework, or the ethico-aesthetics of \u2018life as a work of art\u2019?<\/p>\n

How is this imperative to \u2018be active\u2019 infiltrating and permeating art school pedagogy? And how might the\u00a0art school, the artists\u2019 studio, or even the space-time of the artistic residency provide alternative models of practice or even resistance? Han\u2019s publication, The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering<\/em> proposes an alternative or even antidote to his diagnosed burnout society of achievement, where he argues that to give back life its time and duration, we should reclaim our capacity to dwell and linger, for reflection and contemplation. Deceleration is neither a solution nor an end in and of itself. But the practice of slowing down might open intervals for the creative capacity of lingering, tarrying, waiting, drifting, trepidation, anticipation, doubt, and hesitation, alongside the generative experience of boredom, not knowing, and doing nothing.<\/p>\n

What does deceleration affirm or enable? In Slow Philosophy: Reading Against the Institution<\/em> (2016), Michelle Boulous Walker critiques the instrumentalised contemporary academy with its acquisitional culture of knowledge conceived as resource, a culture of superficial skim reading for the gleaning of quickest quotable sound bites as exchangeable, informational data. Against this, she advocates the practice of slow reading: of reading carefully, of rereading and of returning to what one reads; conceived as a means through which to \u2018re-engage the instituting moments of philosophy as a love of wisdom\u2019 (or even the wisdom of love) \u2018and as a way of life, rather than simply as a desire (or need) to know\u2019 (xvii). For Walker, slow modes of engagement enable transformation rather than simply acquisition; deceleration is deemed necessary for exploring complexity and intensity. Significantly, she asserts that slowness (in reading and in life) has an ethical dimension, for unhurriedness is a precondition for being more available, receptive, and open to the other, as well as to the experience of ambiguity, strangeness, and uncertainty, in turn increasing our potential for intimacy, for love and wonder. Ambiguity. Uncertainty. Patience. Proximity. Receptivity. Even vulnerability. These qualities seem necessary for the practice of art as much as philosophy.<\/p>\n

Certainly, Han\u2019s \u2018burnout society\u2019 might be experienced as imposed from without; however, it is also collectively co-produced and as such must be collectively dismantled. Indeed, Han states, \u2018the achievement subject stands free from any external instance of domination forcing it to work, much less exploiting it \u2013 freedom and constraint coincide\u2019 (11). How are we complicit in creating the conditions of our own exhaustion? How can we recognise the degree of our own complicity, whilst retain a capacity for conceiving otherwise? How can projects such as this catalyse a collective deceleration, shifting from simply lamenting our own exhaustion to activating a change of culture? Is this possible? Can we collectively cultivate what Han describes as a \u2018negative potency\u2019 (24) such that we are capable of together saying \u2018no\u2019?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","group":[3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauseforthought.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entry\/26"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauseforthought.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entry"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauseforthought.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/entry"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauseforthought.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"group","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pauseforthought.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/group?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}