On Slowness

No, art does not need to "accelerate faster"

Last week, in Sublation Mag, Bram E. Gieben published an article titled Wonka in Simulacraland, offering deep insights into the 'Wonkaland' fiasco in Glasgow, examining the event through the concepts of Jean Baudrillard and the hyperreal. In case you missed it, ‘Wonkaland’ was an event promoted to unsuspecting Glaswegian parents with AI-generated images suggesting a recreation of the ‘Wonkaverse’ from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with a vibrant, magical setting that ended up being a major letdown, featuring an almost-empty warehouse with minimal and lacklustre attractions that left children in tears and adults bewildered. The failure has become the subject of widespread mockery and critique, leaving many families feeling scammed and conned. Gieben frames the shoddy event in Glasgow within the context of Baudrillard’s writing on the hyperreal, the simulacra, and simulation, ideas such as the uncanny, and takes us on a journey through some of the missteps and problems with AI-generated art. I’m not going to go into Gieben’s thesis, but it’s an excellent read and I would recommend you go and check it out. 

However, in his discussion of AI art, and towards the end of the article, Gieben prescribes an antidote to the problem faced by art of rapidly advancing technology that I found utterly repulsive. Like a little pubic hair on an otherwise enjoyable post-modern pizza, there’s a sentence that I just can’t stomach. Now, I’d normally just flick the pube aside and carry on. After all, I’m not one for taking a fellow comrade to task. But I’ve seen this particular sentence quote-tweeted by people I respect as if it’s the stone that might deliver the final blow to Goliath. 

Here it is: “No matter how fast technology accelerates, art must accelerate faster.” 

Must it, really? Art must accelerate faster. On the one hand, this sounds like the growth-obsessed slaverings of a faux-creative board executive and, on the other hand, like a totalitarian slogan from a dystopian science fiction novel. War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, and art must accelerate faster. Accelerate faster to where exactly?

In the very next sentence, speaking of the different cinematic portrayals of Willy Wonka, Gieben goes on to say that “if technology copies our abilities, we must hope that our own creations continue to channel the weird alchemy of a Gene Wilder performance, and not the easily-simulated blankness of a Timothee Chalamet clone.” “Continue to” is an interesting phrase for a performance that hit cinema screens over half a century ago. 

There’s a definite progressive slant here, implicit in the Wilder quote and explicit in the “accelerate faster” quote. A commitment to marching forward and a fear of looking back, of stopping and saying, “Maybe we’re going the wrong way,” because to do so is ultimately a conservative position. It’s also not very cool, avante-garde, or cutting-edge; it’s passé.

This innovation infatuation is a thread that runs through Mark Fisher’s work as well. Much of Capitalist Realism is about our culture no longer producing anything new, what he calls a “slow cancellation of the future”. At one point, Fisher writes:

The impasse that paralysed Cobain is precisely the one that Fredric Jameson described: like postmodern culture in general, Cobain found himself in ‘a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, where all that is left is to imitate dead styles in the imaginary museum’.

Is imitation of the dead the only option? How about a dialogue? Why do we need to continue hurtling towards the sun like Icarus? Can’t we hang out in the underworld with Hades? Our culture, politics and psychology, even the critiques and "the alternatives”, are all one-sided and unidirectional: forward, fast, progress, innovation.

To quote Willy Wonka:

Round the world and home again

That’s the sailor’s way

Faster faster, faster faster

There’s no earthly way of knowing

Which direction we are going

There’s no knowing where we’re rowing

Or which way the river’s flowing

Is it raining, is it snowing

Is a hurricane a-blowing

Not a speck of light is showing

So the danger must be growing

Are the fires of Hell a-glowing

Is the grisly reaper mowing

Yes, the danger must be growing

For the rowers keep on rowing

And they’re certainly not showing

Any signs that they are slowing

This mindless forward marching, this vacant stare towards the receding horizon, has echoes of something we’re seeing in parts of today’s left. Something I’d describe as a “colonizing progressivism”: an ever-expanding search for ever-more untouched lands of oppression—a search made increasingly absurd when there are so many obvious examples right in front of us.

If you’ll allow me a slight tangent for a minute, I think it’s appropriate to turn to George Galloway's election, as it captures exactly what I’m talking about. If you need a stark example of the most horrific acts of colonialism, brutal oppression and murderous genocide, then you only need to look to the actions of Isreal in Palestine. And if you want an example of someone who has been as consistent in their resistance to this colonizing as Starmer has been fickle, then look no further than the newly elected Rochdale MP. 

But for the cutting-edge progressives, some mental gymnastics are required. Sure, Gaza may be the flavour of the month right now, but we all know who’s winning the gold medal in the Oppression Olympics. And George Galloway's commentary on these winners has been very, very passé. 

To advocate for social justice, and to do so alongside someone like George Galloway, might feel like a paradox, and it may very well be. But paradoxes are powerful. Holding the tension between opposites is an act that is vitally important. 

In my article in Conter last August, I touched on Jungian and post-Jungian theory in writing about the need for a greater relationship with Soul. In his Collected Works Volume 8, Jung writes:

The ego keeps its integrity only if it does not identify with one of the opposites, and if it understands how to hold the balance between them. This is possible only if it remains conscious of both at once. However, the necessary insight is made exceedingly difficult not by one’s social and political leaders alone but also by one’s religious mentors. They all want decisions in favour of one thing, and therefore the utter identification of the individual with the necessarily one-sided truth.

To be completely clear, this is not some galaxy-brained advocation for a mindless bothsidesism, a false balance, like the contemptable equivocations of right-wing mouthpieces on the genocide in Gaza. Of course, there aren’t always two sides to every story. Not all paradoxes have the potential to deepen our relationship to Soul. But some do.

If your family happens to contain a bigoted uncle and a gender non-conforming daughter or son, there’s a place to stand that makes your child feel safe, calling out the narrow-minded views of Uncle George, but without completely condemning or excommunicating him from the family. And the place you need to stand for that is firmly in Soul. 

If you’ll wander with me, slowly, out of this tangential back alley and return to the proclamation that art must accelerate faster technology, I’d like to welcome Soul, or Psyche, into this part of the discussion. 

In Hesitation and Slowness: Gateway to Psyche's Depth, the Jungian analyst and author Stanton Marlan writes:

There are moments when spontaneous action and quick directness win the day. A moment's hesitation and all is lost. But there are other moments when quickness betrays psyche, when its straight-arrow directness bypasses opportunity-and it is in this absence that psyche resides.

Where else does great art come from, if not from Psyche, if not from Soul? Not only is the journey into Soul, into Psyche, slow, but it is also one of depth. It’s a journey inwards, not outwards, and for that reason, it is anti-colonial. It involves dialogue, conversation, and receptivity instead of domination, one-sidedness, and a monotheistic arrogance about the correctness of one’s views. 

Nick Cave wrote a brilliant letter as a response to someone sending him a Chat GPT version of a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds song. I’ll end with a quote from that letter:

I understand that ChatGPT is in its infancy but perhaps that is the emerging horror of AI – that it will forever be in its infancy, as it will always have further to go, and the direction is always forward, always faster. It can never be rolled back, or slowed down, as it moves us toward a utopian future, maybe, or our total destruction.