Immediatism by
Hakim Bey
vii.
Nevertheless, we are repelled by the extreme alienation of the arts, especially in ``the media,'' in commercial publishing & galleries, in the recording ``industry,'' etc. And we sometimes worry even about the extent to which our very involvement in such arts as writing, painting, or music implicates us in a nasty abstraction, a removal from immediate experience. We miss the directness of play (our original kick in doing art in the first place); we miss smell, taste, touch, the feel of bodies in motion.
viii.
Computers, video, radio, printing presses, synthesizers, fax machines, tape recorders, photocopiers--these things make good toys, but terrible addictions. Finally we realize we cannot ``reach out and touch someone'' who is not present in the flesh. These media may be useful to our art--but they must not possess us, nor must they stand between, mediate, or separate us from our animal/animate selves. We want to control our media, not be Controlled by them. And we should like to remember a certain psychic martial art which stresses the realization that the body itself is the least mediated of all media.
ix.
Therefore, as artists & ``cultural workers'' who have no intention of giving up activity in our chosen media, we nevertheless demand of ourselves an extreme awareness of immediacy, as well as the mastery of some direct means of implementing this awareness as play, immediately (at once) & immediately (without mediation).
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