Lebenskünstler

FYI:

An online slacker summit will take place from 1/2-1/6 at n.e.w.s.

Cutting Slack

By both slacking off from the imperative to work and, symmetrically, deliberately abstaining from leisure, slackers embody a fascinating – and for the productivist majority, infuriating – performative paradox. Slackers don’t “just” slack off; they go at it full-tilt. Performing laziness – that is, the studied and ostentatious practice of doing not much – is all-consuming. But is it subversive? Does it have seditious potential within a regime of productivism? Can it be decreative, obstructing the reifying thrust of the “creative” industry and class with their “artistic research projects”? To answer these questions in the affirmative is to imagine that slackers might come to constitute something of a political community, however slack. But, as Randall Szott has asked, are communities formed by slack not also bound by slack, that is, to entropic collapse without even really working at it? Or can they, martial arts-style, lackadasically harness the surplus force of the productivist adversary? Over the course of this weekend forum, we will ride the slack tide to consider these questions. In suitably slack fashion.

The moderator will be Stephen Wright.

I’ll be the “special guest.”

Confirmed participants include:

Brian Holmes – Continental Drift

Chris Carlsson – Nowtopia and Processed World

Andy Abbott – Festival of Pastimes and http://www.andyabbott.co.uk/

Katherine Carl – NAO

Sal Randolph – http://salrandolph.com/

Hideous Beast – http://www.hideousbeast.com/

Many more T.B.A

Please contact me if you’d like more info on how to join the conversation!