Fast Media/Slow Thought
The accelerating growth of communication technology over the past several decades has no corresponding conceptual or theoretical counterpart, unless it is the term ‘media’ standing in for ‘technics’ as a whole. Subjectivity is the medium of the media, it’s been noted.[1] Media growth has in fact been treated as an aspect of personal growth, that the law should not intrude upon, not only in the United States where such an ideology became prominent in the postwar period, but across much of the world. More
The idea for this website grew out of conversations around Black Lives Matter in the summer of 2020, amidst violence from the police, the pandemic and the presidency. We wrote up a statement, that turned into a Petition that accumulated signatures and drew further discussion. The aim of the website is to critically interrogate ‘media’ as thought space and life world, and to explore differences between historically distinct ideas and techniques of representation and participation.
This site is a space for ongoing reflections around four broad Themes: Institutions, Objects, Ideologies, Undoing/Rethinking, with essays posted under these headings.
Contributions are welcome. If you would like to submit a short essay/reflection, or if you have further ideas for our site, please send it to arvindnyc@gmail.com or to tobym69@icloud.com. All posted submissions will be acknowledged and credited. Comments are of course welcome too, and will be moderated to facilitate discussion.
As a self-managed site, we expect to post new reflections every few weeks.
The background image is by James Nelson, a Brooklyn-based artist. Untitled, (99.4304), 1999, Graphite on Gampi paper, 29 x 21 inches. Please contact info@jamesnelsondrawing.com for permissions.
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