Latest / The PAUSE with Ari Clibe / Frames of Immediacy: Speed, Culture, and Digestion, with Artist Elysia Mann (S3E11)

Transcript

Frames of Immediacy: Speed, Culture, and Digestion, with Artist Elysia Mann (S3E11) · The PAUSE with Ari Clibe

0:00
Hey, did you hear the bullfrog? Or the. Hell, yeah, whatever.
0:04
Is that the bullfrog? I've been listening when we were on the walk,
0:09
the recording you sent me. Yeah. I feel like I want to use that,
0:11
like, to be, like, part of your. Your sound. Like my signature
0:15
sound. Sound. Yeah. What do you think of that? Yeah, it's, like,
0:19
natural, and it was, like, completely like. I like it.
0:23
Yeah. Okay, cool. I have your permission to do that?
0:27
You don't have to ask for my permission, of course.
0:30
That's journalistic. I like standard.
0:35
Yeah, but again, who defined the journalistic standards?
0:39
I didn't know this was journalism and not art.
0:47
You're listening to the paws, providing sanctuary for
0:52
the wild ones, streaming worldwide at www.radiokcn.com
0:59
in Knoxville.
1:03
I've been thinking lately about the people who refuse to move
1:07
on too quickly. Not stubborn
1:11
people, not contrarians,
1:16
not experts.
1:20
Something else.
1:24
The people who linger. The people who stay
1:28
with a difficult question a little longer
1:32
than everyone else. The people who sit
1:36
through the awkward silences.
1:40
The people who walk the long way
1:44
home.
1:50
The people who enter a museum and spend
1:54
40 minutes with a single piece of art.
1:58
Well, everyone else has already made it to the gift shop.
2:06
The people who are willing to look foolish.
2:13
The people who are willing to be uncertain.
2:22
The people who resist the pressure to know
2:26
immediately what they think.
2:36
I encounter these people from time to
2:50
Sometimes they're artists.
2:55
Sometimes they're musicians.
3:01
Sometimes they're teachers,
3:09
Their neighbors.
3:16
There's someone I run into in the
3:25
Sometimes they're hiding in plain sight.
3:34
And whenever I meet one, I have the distinct feeling that
3:39
they belong to the same tribe as us.
3:48
Not a tribe with membership cards or statuses,
3:54
not a tribe with uniforms.
3:58
Just a tribe organized around a simple
4:04
and different relationship with time.
4:17
Because, you know, time feels strange right
4:26
Everything's arriving a little bit faster.
4:36
The news, opinions, trends,
4:42
even outrage.
4:46
Our technologies are
4:51
increasingly promising us immediate access to whatever
4:55
we desire.
5:01
Information, entertainment, connection,
5:07
advice,
5:13
And even meaning.
5:18
The distance between wanting and receiving keeps shrinking.
5:32
And yet I find myself wondering.
5:42
What happens to us when everything arrives
5:46
immediately.
5:51
A few months ago, I began listening to a book by literary
5:55
critic Anna Kornblu called Immediacy,
6:00
or the Style of Too Late Capitalism.
6:07
And while listening to the book, I kept noticing my own impatience.
6:19
In doing so, I decided to invite artist and
6:23
printmaker Elisha Mann into conversation.
6:34
Alicia works at the University of Tennessee School of Art and
6:38
creates work rooted in weaving, labor, community,
6:41
and slowness.
6:52
She describes her work as an invitation toward embodiment uncertainty,
6:59
and what she calls slow looking.
7:18
In other words, she spends a lot of time making
7:22
things that refuse to hurry.
7:31
What follows is a conversation about a book.
7:40
And not a conversation about a book.
7:50
It's a conversation about art,
7:56
Attention,
8:00
community, even processed food,
8:09
And why difficult things matter.
8:17
And whether they should be accessible.
8:27
And what happens when everything becomes optimized for
8:31
consumption.
8:36
Somewhere underneath all of that, another question also emerges.
8:43
What kind of people are we becoming?
8:53
I don't know the answer, but I suspect the
8:57
answer has something to do with those people I mentioned earlier.
9:08
The wild ones who linger,
9:13
the wild ones who wander,
9:19
the wild ones who stay.
9:23
Here's my conversation with Alicia Mann.
9:39
The book we're going to talk about is Immediacy and
9:46
why We Should Care.
9:48
Immediacy and the Style of Too
9:52
Late Capitalism. I was most excited about it because first
9:57
of all, I don't read enough theory books, especially not
10:01
enough that I give a shit about.
10:07
And it just hit on things that I think
10:11
about a lot, but not in that smart of a way.
10:15
So it gave language to urges and instincts
10:20
that I've already been working with the author, Anna Kornblue,
10:23
who is a professor in literary criticism. I think.
10:28
Apparently the book came out two years ago,
10:31
but only recently on audio. And I was telling, when I was first telling you
10:34
about it, I was bragging about how I was one of the first borrowers on
10:39
Libby. Libby for Libby. Right. And by the time I returned it, there were lots
10:43
of people waiting for my copy. And. And Libby is again,
10:47
just for people that might not know the public library on
10:51
your phone. Mostly I read with my ears other than. I mean,
10:55
I have. And I work at the university, so I have a
10:59
borrowing privileges and I never have more than 40
11:03
books checked out at any given time. Plus I have my own collection of
11:07
impulse purchases that I have to catch up on for the rest of
11:11
my life. So I avoid all of that and read audiobooks on Libby
11:17
and Audible. There's just
11:21
a little bit of insatiability. And also my style of
11:25
reading is Life is short. I don't have time to
11:28
like suffer through Virginia Woolf. I've tried many
11:32
times and I will continue to try. I'll give it a go. If she's not
11:37
hitting the spot, I'm moving on. I got other things
11:41
to do. So I check out many things with someday
11:45
that maybe there's some possibility that you'll have the patience.
11:48
Right. And. And so the books that I do actually like finish and
11:53
read all the way through, which is. Which is not Like a tiny
11:57
amount. I'm already ahead of schedule for,
12:01
you know, the like 52 books a year. Whatever. A book a week.
12:05
I'm ahead of a book a week, actually reading it all the way through for
12:09
this year. I probably have more DNFs than Fs.
12:15
I'm way past worrying about DNFs.
12:19
Yeah, me too. Yeah, way past. And I don't blame
12:24
the book. A lot of times if I did not finish,
12:27
I. It's usually me. Can I just share something with
12:31
you before we get into it? Yeah. This was a
12:35
major, major revelation. And I credit
12:39
my professor at college who
12:43
was my advisor. What college? I just thought maybe in
12:48
her book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think they know.
12:53
I always mention that 10 times an episode.
12:59
She said something like. And it might have been Levy
13:02
Strauss who coined this originally,
13:07
but it was something like, it's not that the
13:12
book itself is the problem, but it's the act of reading that
13:16
matters. And I was like, that clicked
13:20
for me for some major reason. It gave me a lot of sovereignty
13:24
around. Just like, yeah, this book, you might say it's
13:28
great, but it's not hitting me. And so I'll give it a chapter or
13:33
two and then I'm like, now I'm moving on. And so
13:37
it's like, it focuses on our interaction with text and
13:42
our capacity or willingness to decode certain things that I
13:46
was just like, you know, if it doesn't hit me, I'm not gonna even think
13:49
twice about it. Well, this is very relevant for the themes of immediacy
13:56
on the surface contradicts
14:01
the argument of the book. So. Which I am inclined
14:05
to like love everything about the book and say
14:09
that everybody should read it. So I don't really want to introduce
14:14
things that criticize or that conflict with that. But the
14:18
idea of being able to like jump around while we're reading relates
14:22
to attention span, the shortness
14:27
of life in late capitalism where, you know, the world
14:31
is ending. We're in a constant crisis of the present. We don't
14:35
have time to suffer through a
14:40
difficult thing. Right. And this is like a lot of her,
14:43
her argument. And I think we all encounter
14:49
that in what, in how we consume, whether it's snacks
14:55
or literature or theory or
14:59
art. So she's making this argument that immediacy,
15:03
like the idea that things should be easily consumed and easily digestible
15:07
is kind of the over driving ethos
15:11
of our current like stylistic zeitgeist. I think
15:16
it's pretty accurate. I mean, we just gave a great example of
15:19
that in how we read. Right. But it's also
15:24
something that I fight against in how I create and how I consume
15:30
other things. And like, I.
15:33
And the book itself, this book itself, like, was not easy
15:37
to read, and yet I wanted to suffer through it, to do
15:41
the work. It was, it was a bit of a slog. It's not accessible.
15:47
I think accessibility is really the heart of, like,
15:51
there's so much pressure to make your work accessible.
15:55
Yes. In this late phase,
16:00
because people's time, as you said, there's valuable.
16:04
And yet who has time?
16:09
We don't have time because of the pressures of capitalism, but we also don't
16:13
have time because we're all about to die and we don't know when it is,
16:16
but it seems like could be tomorrow.
16:19
And the only balm for that is
16:24
things that.
16:31
That can be monetized and pitched to us and consumed
16:35
and feed the. Feed the problem. Yeah. So she's
16:40
advocating for an awareness of that.
16:43
She's advocating for, I think, I think what's. What's ultimately,
16:47
like, really hard to accept is the, the hopefulness
16:51
of her argument. For me anyway, like, because I,
16:55
I buy into the doomer.
16:59
The doomerism of our
17:03
current state and, and it's something that, that we should be fighting against and,
17:08
and the art and. And creative output are the ways to
17:12
fight against it. And it's incredibly hopeful to not
17:17
only choose to engage with literature,
17:22
film, artwork that takes
17:26
a while to unfold in us, but it's
17:30
even more incredibly hopeful and optimistic to create
17:35
things that you know are gonna.
17:39
Are meant to unfold slowly,
17:42
are riddled with complexity, have negative capability.
17:46
Take the work of connecting.
17:54
Connecting your own. Your own response to a thing, to how
17:59
other people might respond to a thing. And I think that there have been been
18:02
a lot of very theoretical, academic,
18:06
engaged responses to this book within that,
18:10
like, literary criticism world, and maybe a
18:14
little less in the art world. I don't know.
18:31
But it's like. It's like the. The things that.
18:34
That straddle the line of tribalism. I think that's
18:38
part of why tribalism is so hard because. Or so prevalent today, because tribalism is
18:42
immediate. Like the algorithm feeds us what we already will
18:49
agree with. There's no work to be done.
18:52
We don't have to. To, you know, devil's advocate with
18:56
anybody outside of ourselves. We don't. I don't know.
19:00
It's. It's just all very
19:03
self.
19:07
What's the word? Confirming self,
19:10
confirming so much of the work, like so
19:14
much of creative Output is just meant to make people
19:20
dig deeper into their own personal little holes and disconnect
19:25
from each other and only connect to consumption.
19:33
And this is what I think about a lot in my own practice. And I
19:37
appreciate a work of critical theory addressing
19:42
the idea in broad strokes us that.
19:46
So if, if there's artists. If you're an artist listening to the.
19:50
This episode, right, One of the takeaways that you would want people
19:54
to think about would be to
19:59
what extent their own work is,
20:04
well, let's put it this way, has pressure to be
20:09
excessive. Yes. What is the. What is the pressure for
20:13
accessibility? But the bigger question,
20:17
I think, well, and how far does that accessibility extend?
20:23
Like, what do we mean by accessibility? Because what's accessible to a
20:27
niche group is inaccessible. And so a lot of her argument
20:32
is about circulation. Like, things have to be like, part of immediacy is
20:36
circulation. Like getting it out widely,
20:40
quickly. Like, we want it now. Like, give me my ladybug now.
20:45
I don't want to have holes. That's why I was
20:49
bragging about that. But,
20:52
but beyond accessibility, like,
20:56
what's the lasting power? What's the, what's the nutritional value?
21:00
So, like, I can't help, I can't help but thinking about that
21:04
was plenty of excuses. Like bread,
21:08
you know? Yes. Like literal
21:12
bread. Like processed foods. The whole thing about processed foods now and the bread
21:16
test, and you put bread in water for three hours and if it totally dissolves,
21:20
it's like bread. But if, if, if you come
21:24
back after three hours and there's. It still resembles bread.
21:29
Like, it's got actual nutritional value. It's like whole grains
21:33
and stuff. And it's going to take your body longer to digest.
21:36
Okay. And so the problem with processed foods and why it causes so many
21:40
health problems is because, like, we're eating these things that just go straight through and
21:45
then, and, and we're. Our body doesn't do any work on processing
21:49
them. And then we atrophy our system. And it's the same with our brains.
21:53
Like, if we're not eating any, like whole grains,
21:57
in our mind, we're atrophying.
22:01
And, and, and then all we can rely on is like,
22:06
constant intake. In and
22:09
out, in and out. We're like the, the hungry, hungry ghost. Casper the ghost.
22:13
Like, just feed me and it goes out. Feed me and it goes out.
22:15
Feed me and it goes out. Like, that's very now.
22:20
Very now. There is no past. There is no future.
22:25
Constantly eating. I'm shitting.
22:28
I didn't think we would go There. But I guess we are. Well, we're eating
22:32
Cheetos, Fritos. Yes. Processed foods and potato chips. And they're delicious.
22:36
Yeah, but, but so the. So back to your thing
22:41
about, like, what, what is the.
22:45
The accessibility is. Is part of it. But I
22:48
think for me, like, the, for me, the question that's more interesting
22:53
and more in line with how, How. How I think of the studio is,
22:56
is what is the lasting power? And I, I work.
23:00
I've always said, like, I'm a proponent
23:04
of slow process and blah, blah, blah, anti capitalist. But I
23:09
want work that can be lived with and
23:15
grow in meaning over time. Right.
23:19
Or. Or unfold or however you want to look at that. And I think that's
23:23
what whole grain bread does. It becomes part of you,
23:27
at least for a while. And then your body takes what it needs.
23:31
Right. Your body takes what it needs and
23:36
the whole process is slower and it relies on.
23:40
Well, it just takes more work and it's very uncomfortable.
23:44
That's where negative capability comes in. Like, negative capability is
23:48
very anti. Immediacy. Okay,
23:52
so what does that mean?
23:54
Marilyn Callett, I hope you're listening.
23:58
Negative capability is the ability
24:02
to exist within uncertainty and doubt
24:05
without the irritable grasping for sureness.
24:09
And I.
24:13
Marilyn Khaled, I hope you're not listening.
24:18
Negative capability is the ability to exist within doubt
24:23
and uncertainty without irritable grasping for
24:27
reason. Something along those lines is Kate's Keats,
24:31
you know, in the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment,
24:36
responding with this romantic urge for complexity
24:40
and nuance
24:44
and slow digestion.
24:50
And I think these things are all connected to the class wars.
24:58
These are historical patterns that have never stopped being
25:04
the same enduring thread through all of
25:07
this. Like, what is the value in what we make and what we do and
25:11
how we interact? So I, I want to bring us back to.
25:14
We were at the Knoxville Museum of Art, and we
25:18
were listening to a talk from two
25:23
artists. I think they were on a panel and
25:26
one of them was creating weavings.
25:29
Oh, this is. Yeah, yeah, one minute there. Yeah. When we
25:33
were there. And one of the things about walking around the galleries
25:38
of the museum was that the store, there was a
25:42
story in each of those pieces of art.
25:45
Yeah. And it was not a commercial where you
25:49
could kind of get it and then go buy it. You had to sit with
25:53
the discomfort of, like, what that story was really about.
25:57
Labor was definitely a major,
26:00
major focus of that artist. I forget her name.
26:03
She's in Chattanooga. Tabitha.
26:09
I mean, with a name like that, you really only need one. Tabitha from
26:13
Chattanooga. That's how they used to do it in the Middle Ages. Yeah.
26:17
Tabitha from Chattanooga. We don't mean any disrespect.
26:21
We actually. Oh, I'm so sorry.
26:26
We spent more time with your art than remembering your last name. Yeah.
26:30
I did remember so much. I remember she spent some time in Philly at the
26:34
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, which I just learned is shutting down because
26:39
the art world is going through some convolutions
26:43
of itself as it dies. Yeah. Just so everyone
26:48
lets you know that we're hitting the third snack.
26:51
It's the one that we both agreed beforehand.
26:55
Yeah. Is the highest value. Exactly. Of the three options.
26:58
And there's massive nutrition in this thing. Yes.
27:05
You know what would make it even better? If it was one of those fire.
27:08
Oh, yeah. I mean, I know that would have been.
27:13
Yeah. I can't. I can't help it. I love hot chips.
27:17
Okay, so getting back to
27:21
that work that was. It was uncomfortable. Right. Because it took time.
27:25
For those of us who are outside of that. Of that specific.
27:29
That's what I'm talking about. Like, for some people, I bet that work was immediately
27:33
accessible. But those of us who exist with outside
27:37
of, like, labor movements and the history of that and those
27:43
specific traditions,
27:48
it takes more time. Anyway,
27:52
cheetahs are. They're so good. I'm supposed to mention
27:56
the name. Oh, well, good. Then you'll definitely be editing
27:59
that. But how in the world did that snack that we're consuming.
28:05
It's just going right through us. It's. It would not hold water mean
28:10
it would hold water. Yeah. It would not hold water, Right? Yes.
28:15
Like, why aren't we making work that holds water?
28:20
Do we don't. We don't think there's any reason to
28:24
have to hold water. Cuz it's all going down the drain anyway.
28:28
And so it's so bleak. And I fall into this all the time
28:32
myself. And it's really hard to hold on to hope. But,
28:35
like, as a printmaker, like people are just.
28:39
Today I was scoffing at somebody who was
28:43
like, oh, is that light fast? The pigment we
28:47
were using, is it light fast, though? Because work needs to last for 100 years.
28:51
And my immediate thought was, oh, honey,
28:55
we don't got 100 years. 100 years.
28:59
We don't have to worry. We're in a post archival era.
29:04
We don't have to worry about archival. Right. Nobody's gonna
29:08
be around. And then I was like, that's imi. That's exactly
29:12
immediacy.
29:27
Still don't have Any good feel for that? What I do have
29:31
a feel for, like, which of these three you would pick first. Oh,
29:34
fun game.
29:37
Okay, I think you could rule. You could rule out one if
29:41
you wanted to and then you could go with what I think you think I'm
29:44
gonna think. Oh, you want me to guess what
29:48
you think I'm gonna choose?
29:51
Yeah, that's two meta.
29:55
Okay, two meta. Okay, just pick. Okay. I think you would want the Fritos
29:59
first. I want the Cheetos. Oh, interesting. I wanted the
30:02
Cheetos first. I thought you were gonna pick the Fritos.
30:10
And this if you were gonna rule one out. Both of our third choice.
30:14
Exactly. I was totally on
30:18
the Cheetos. I was gonna get three Cheetos, but I was like, that's too bold
30:21
a move. You know what my main argument is with them?
30:25
They need to be thicker.
30:29
They're weak, but great on like a sandwich. Yeah.
30:33
Or two tuna, egg salad.
30:38
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They feel like a condiment.
30:43
Condiment. Yeah. Cheetos. Not a condiment. Not a condiment.
30:47
No. Meal. A meal.
30:52
Cheetos are a meal. Probably are for
30:56
some people,
31:12
But there's a needle to thread
31:16
here. Go ahead, lay it on us. I mean, I don't know what it is,
31:20
but I think that this book is calling for us to consider it.
31:25
What possible way out of this conundrum. Best I
31:30
can come up with for myself right now, and this is like what I hope
31:34
will mature
31:37
the more I think about this book over time is
31:42
for now, be aware of
31:48
that response to time and the,
31:51
the futility of engaging and long in long term
31:55
thinking and do it anyway, even if you don't believe.
31:59
And, and, and, and that's like on the maker side and then
32:03
on the consumption side, pay attention to
32:08
these urges where we are like, I don't have. My life is too short to
32:13
waste my time reading books that are hard. Sometimes that's legitimate, sometimes it's
32:17
just because it's hard and we've atrophied our
32:21
brains with Cheetos.
32:25
I'd love to be able to articulate a
32:29
concern. So here's the problem. Like as
32:34
a maker and also someone
32:38
who consumes their own work, because I
32:42
did that when one of my mentors. That was like the most important thing that
32:46
one of my mentors taught me.
32:51
Like, if you can't sit with your own work,
32:55
don't make it like, that's not.
32:59
You're not touching. And he called it the magic of art.
33:04
Oh, I have a problem with that. I'm just saying that's really
33:08
interesting. I know, right? It's really. It's really interesting.
33:13
So I'm trying to interject that into this conversation as a
33:17
way of saying it's problematizing the construction
33:22
of the argument. Yeah. But that
33:26
also makes me think of the conversation
33:30
that we had before about. As artists and
33:36
collectors, how do you distinguish
33:40
between approaching
33:43
your own work or other people's work while
33:49
wearing either of those hats and like the freedom of allowing
33:54
yourself to love with your
33:58
soft body. Loves. Or however Mary Oliver says it and. And not have to emulate.
34:04
Have the urge to emulate it as a. As a maker versus
34:08
the freedom to make things and not have to love it.
34:12
It's like if you can't sit with.
34:16
With what you're making, but it needs to come out of you, like,
34:20
how do you respond to that? Like, if there's something that needs to
34:24
come out of you, but you can't sit with it, should it not be made?
34:29
The implication was no, right? Yeah, the answer. The implication
34:33
was no. Don't make it. Correct. And for you as an artist
34:37
to grow, for me, as an example, that until I could.
34:42
It doesn't mean I have to like it. Okay,
34:46
well, there we go. That's immediacy. To be able to sit
34:50
with it. To sit with it is not to necessarily like it. Okay, okay.
34:54
This is important. Yes. There's some things that I make that come out of me
34:58
that I don't like, but they go on the wall. Now I
35:03
have a choice to make. How much time I want to spend with that,
35:07
which could be zero. I'm like, you know what? I don't like it right now.
35:11
So I'm out of here. But it's still going up in my studio when
35:17
I'm making visual art. Right. I have,
35:21
like, four thoughts that I want to. You have four.
35:26
Like four separate branches. Go ahead. One of those that
35:30
is easy to pin and then come back to is
35:37
how do we live with our own creations
35:42
that disappoint us? Sure.
35:46
Right. Pin in that.
35:49
Another is what if immediacy, as in
35:54
a corn blue, is presenting it
35:59
or as we've talked about, because this should talk about a lot of other things
36:03
that we haven't really touched on. But what if part of the problem
36:07
is just palatability, not necessarily
36:11
digestibility, but palatability. Liking something
36:15
versus being able to sit with it. Like,
36:18
immediate positive response.
36:22
That's the. That's the danger.
36:27
Like white bread. That does.
36:30
That dissolves. Donuts. Donuts, Donuts,
36:34
donuts. Will dissolve very quickly in water.
36:38
They don't hold. Water versus things that,
36:42
you know, the bitters, the, the, the. The. The complex
36:47
carbs, whatever. The, the things that take.
36:53
Developing a taste for. Because, you know, they're good for
36:57
you. The. The engaging with things that are,
37:01
at first instinct, repulsive or.
37:06
Or at the very least, like, un. Savory,
37:09
Unsavory. Unsavory. Yeah,
37:13
that's what we've gotten really bad at. Really bad at it.
37:17
Like, I. I just admit I throw the towel in all the time.
37:20
Yeah. You know, like, even in your
37:25
studio. Right. I imagine you have different affinities
37:30
for work. Oh, so this takes us back to the pin
37:34
that we put in. Like, how do you live with stuff that you've made?
37:37
Yeah, I have a piece that immediately comes to mind. Like, I hate this piece.
37:41
I made it. Right. So what do you do with it?
37:45
Well, it's still hanging up, and I'm forcing myself to, like, look at
37:49
it all the time, but it's got green in it, and I don't know why
37:52
I chose that, but there we are, and it's done.
37:56
Now I'm just hoping somebody else likes
37:59
it. At some point,
38:05
My mentor necessarily would throw that comment out.
38:10
Well, and this is where you. And you. Your mentor
38:14
and I agree. Like, I think that my own evaluation
38:18
of my work is the value. Like, if I don't like it,
38:22
why should anybody else? That's another way of
38:27
saying of phrasing what your mentor was saying. If you can't sit with your own
38:30
work, don't make it right. And that's not. That's different
38:34
than saying we can't make mistakes or we can't. He was not saying that.
38:38
He was definitely not saying that. Because, you know, I did a series on yantras,
38:42
like, these meditative things from the yoga tradition,
38:45
and I made maybe, like, 60 or so of
38:49
those. And we spread them out on the floor and we looked at them and
38:52
we thought, you know, these are the ones that, like, this is the ones
38:57
you want to put in the. In the gallery's window.
39:00
And these are the ones that you want to hold back and don't
39:04
show when you have, like, oh, you're interested.
39:09
Oh, do you want to, like, come in the back? Just wait till you see
39:13
this one. Yeah, I sent it for. And I was like, what? What?
39:16
What? Wait a second. Really? Like, that all exists. I saved
39:21
it for you. I saved it for you. Like,
39:24
okay. Just that process, just that decision to hold something back,
39:29
like, the best piece. Yeah, it was the best piece.
39:33
Don't even put it in there. Hold it back until someone expresses interest and then
39:37
be like, oh, yeah, just wait till you do that. I know, right?
39:40
That is hopeful. You don't
39:44
do that if it's too late and you and the world
39:49
is ending and it's all fucking shit, you know?
39:52
That's so hopeful. Wait a second. Hold on
39:56
a sec. And that was at a place when the
40:00
work itself was just flowing, you know, And I didn't want to
40:04
interrupt that flow. And I was like,
40:07
that's an option. Did you do it?
40:12
Did I do what? Did you. Did you have the show and hold.
40:16
No, I didn't do this show back. No, I didn't do the show.
40:20
Although there's this gallery that wants me to do a show.
40:23
Do you still have the. Yeah, the collection. Yeah, of course I do.
40:27
Do you have pieces that are your favorite that you hold back?
40:31
Yeah, I do. Do you have the hope to do it? Hold the back.
40:36
Flipping it around now. I want you to answer that question, but I'll
40:40
answer it. Yeah. I'm curious. I don't believe in hope.
40:44
Oh, right. You've said this to me before.
40:48
Yeah. So I don't. I can,
40:52
like, I just. I don't. That's just crosses a line
40:56
with me. Doesn't mean I won't do it.
41:00
But it just seems premeditated.
41:10
I mean, I'm big into, like, just flaws.
41:13
I like flaws.
41:17
I think there was a poem.
41:21
You probably know it. It was called Ode to a Grecian Urn.
41:33
And it was about. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Might have been Keats
41:38
Tennyson. I'm sure it wasn't.
41:41
Okay. It was Kelsey. Was Keats.
41:44
Okay. And the Grecian urn
41:48
had flaws in it. Yeah. And, like,
41:52
there's also that pressure. I don't know if the other two branches of your foursome
41:56
questions were, but I kind
42:00
of like that. Like what?
42:04
I like when I made mistakes, you know? And I.
42:07
I guess what I do do is I just started making some new work,
42:12
and when I make mistakes,
42:15
I actually celebrate them. Now I give myself this,
42:19
like, repetitive chore, and I'll do it, and then I'll be
42:23
like, whoa, whoa, I just messed up. And then I'll be like, oh,
42:27
I messed up. Yay. So I like that.
42:30
And that gets me out of the predicament of
42:34
holding back. Someone feels really special because I
42:38
invited them in the back. Yeah.
42:44
Yeah. This actually touches on. This makes me want
42:48
to open up another part of the argument of the book. Which we haven't really
42:51
touched on yet. Which is. And which relates back to the last book
42:58
review we did, which is the idea of tribalism or immediacy or
43:02
circulation as she presents it, like everything,
43:05
the flatness of the entire globe, everything,
43:08
everywhere, all at once. And if it doesn't speak
43:12
directly to you personally that in such a way that
43:16
you don't have to engage in the hard work
43:20
of mediating your response against the collective
43:24
response, then it
43:28
passes. And that with the
43:33
arguments from Ishmael, where small groups.
43:38
The limit of local communities. Regionalism, like Tabitha's
43:43
work, where people within the labor movement can
43:48
immediately recognize
43:53
and digest certain things. And in some ways her work is made
43:56
for them. And for the rest of us,
44:00
it takes work to.
44:02
And. And that is the growth. That's the growth and
44:06
the expansion that art can offer. So.
44:14
Remind me how we.
44:17
Remind me where I was going with this. You're making connection
44:20
between Ishmael and. Yes.
44:26
And I think an underlying argument
44:30
that her theory
44:34
of style that was proposing was like the universality
44:39
of immediately digestible,
44:42
like consumable. Get it fast, understand it.
44:45
It's in your face. Emotionally. There's no nuance, there's no
44:50
complexity. But that is so broadly applied
44:57
versus, like an
45:01
immediate accessibility, but only within a certain group or
45:06
certain audience. And then there are like
45:11
expanding circles of
45:15
understanding and immediacy depending
45:19
on how close you are to that target audience
45:23
or whatever. So she's offering that as
45:27
a way to. She doesn't offer that.
45:32
She doesn't offer. But that's what makes me. That's why I'm bringing in Ishmael.
45:35
That's like. Like I'm connecting the argument of that book,
45:39
which has an anti globalist message.
45:43
Yeah. Small communities,
45:47
regional, local interdependence.
45:52
And her argument of like
45:58
mass consumption,
46:02
what is accessible to as many people as possible as being part
46:06
of the, like, sugar problem that we all.
46:10
But that also relates to the journalism that we were talking about
46:14
on the way over here. Because certain media
46:19
journalism. Oh, yes, yes. They're doing it for a national
46:23
audience. Yeah. And this show takes
46:28
a stand and says, no, we're not going to do that. Yeah.
46:32
We're going to come up with the questions of, like,
46:36
what is it to be here in this local tribe.
46:43
Yeah. Your community building, your place, making. So who is. Who is
46:46
the community? Who is the audience? Right. And that's a
46:51
great question to ask. I think that even more.
46:55
Ooh,
46:58
that's a great question to ask. And what's the even harder question
47:02
and the more foreign question for us in too
47:07
Late capitalism is not how do we
47:10
define that group, but how do we define the
47:15
ones adjacent to it and our interaction with them for
47:21
the inter. For the exchange.
47:25
Like, you can still belong to your audience group,
47:28
but if you engage in works that are difficult
47:33
because they're outside of your immediate understanding,
47:36
but they're like there's some kind of connection, there's some kind
47:40
of recognition, but it's hard and it's foreign.
47:44
And it takes work to like reconcile the
47:49
parts that you do recognize with the parts that make you feel
47:52
like an outsider or not quite in the inner circle of knowing.
47:56
That's where, that's where I think it gets interesting.
48:01
That's where the negative capability comes into play. That's where you have
48:05
it an invitation, but you're not quite there and
48:09
you get to engage.
48:12
I like what you're saying. I do feel like that's a way and
48:16
that doesn't feel hang its hat on hope.
48:20
It requires invitation, which is. Is also hard
48:25
in our current climate. Like we don't invite
48:29
outsiders into our tribes.
48:32
Right, but isn't that xenophobia?
48:36
Yes. Yeah, but that's what we're being programmed,
48:41
I believe, to believe.
48:44
So doing things that in a group, to me seems like
48:48
a way to say I'm not the center of attention.
48:52
It's what's going on between us that's really the
48:56
focus. That's where the difficulty is. It's so difficult
49:00
and that's. It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. And sometimes
49:05
you feel like you're sticking yourself out, but at
49:09
the end of the day, that's kind of what's happening. What's the
49:13
most uncomfortable thing for you in, in that
49:17
kind of interaction? Like, well, what is your biggest fear of
49:22
prioritizing the space between.
49:28
I'll give an example. Like, my biggest fear, My biggest fear is, is seeming
49:33
stupid or ignorant, you know, like coming across
49:37
as dumb. My biggest fear
49:41
is being. Well, it's twofold. One is I'm
49:46
saying no to a certain branding
49:51
or self image that I have. And saying no to
49:55
that, that's a big risk. And I'm afraid
49:59
of that because I feel like I'll be rejected by society
50:04
and social groups. Rejection. Rejection.
50:08
Yeah, I think that's a big, big one. And then related to
50:12
that, I feel like there's a whole thing about capability.
50:16
I'm just not skilled enough or like you should have.
50:20
And it's related to, it's related to feeling stupid. Yeah, yeah,
50:24
yeah, but, yeah, but Feeling judged,
50:28
like, oh, what he's doing isn't skilled. Well, in all these things,
50:32
I think both of what we just cried. All of it leads to. To banishment.
50:35
Like, the real fear is banishment. Yeah, banishment for sure.
50:39
Yeah. So the fear of banishment is
50:44
going to be a huge motivator to create work that's
50:48
immediate, right? Exactly.
50:54
The end. Read Anacorn. That's the end. Yeah. We got to
50:58
read the book. Yeah, but it's. Don't expect it to be easy.
51:03
This conversation, I don't think was easy.
51:07
It felt like sort of stepping in like a
51:12
land. A field of landmines. It's hard
51:16
because it's theory. I mean, theory is like.
51:20
Well, let's face it, theory without theory is just practicing.
51:25
And when you go off kilter, how do you
51:29
get back on? Yeah. Theory is the guide. Theory is values, core values.
51:34
Theory is like. Is. Is zooming out and
51:38
making connections so that you can zoom back
51:42
in and do the thing that you're doing and have it be
51:47
both you and
51:52
your inner circle, that immediate audience. And maybe, if we're
51:56
lucky, a couple levels of the, like, next closest
52:01
ones so that we can connect beyond ourselves.
52:13
You've been listening to my conversation with Elisha Mann about
52:17
Anna Kornblu's book Immediacy or the Style
52:21
of Too Late Capitalism. As often happens here on
52:25
the pause, I began with a book and end up somewhere
52:29
entirely new.
52:36
I find myself thinking less about literary criticism and more
52:41
about habits.
52:46
The habits we inherit,
52:50
the habits we reward.
52:56
The habits we barely notice because everyone around us
52:59
seems to share them.
53:06
The habit of speed,
53:10
the habit of certainty,
53:15
The habit of reaction.
53:22
And the habit of moving on.
53:27
One thing I appreciate about Alicia is that she seems willing to stay with things
53:31
longer than most people.
53:37
Don't do anything yet.
53:42
Long enough for doubt to enter.
53:48
Just notice where you are standing.
53:53
Long enough for complexity to appear.
54:00
Long enough for her own impressions to become less
54:05
reliable.
54:10
Your feet know more than you do. That strikes
54:14
me as increasingly rare these days.
54:21
Not because people have become less intelligent or
54:26
because they care less. There is something
54:32
here you didn't come for.
54:37
Let it come anyway.
54:46
But instead, because there's so many forces competing
54:50
for our attention,
54:54
you took something that wasn't yours to take.
54:57
Everything's asking us to move. Keep scrolling,
55:01
keep consuming. Keep reacting. Keep deciding.
55:05
Keep going. Maybe. And maybe
55:10
that's why this conversation has stayed with me.
55:14
Not because it offered any good answers.
55:18
Actually, it didn't. Maybe you did.
55:21
It just offered really great questions.
55:25
Questions that don't seem interested in resolving themselves anytime
55:30
soon. What is worth our time?
55:34
What deserves our attention?
55:38
What happens when we remove all friction from our experience?
55:47
You told yourself it was nothing.
55:51
What happens when every difficult thing becomes
55:56
easier? And perhaps most importantly,
56:00
what happens when every question arrives carrying
56:04
an answer behind it keeps moving? That last
56:08
question's been really kind of spooking me out a
56:12
lot lately, because just beyond the horizon of this conversation
56:17
stands another one. The conversation about artificial
56:21
general intelligence. A technology that
56:25
promises extraordinary possibilities, a technology
56:29
that increasingly places answers within arm's
56:33
reach. A technology that may reshape
56:38
how we learn, create,
56:41
communicate, remember, and imagine.
56:46
And so, next time on the Pause, I'll sit down with Sue Spolin
56:50
to explore AI not as a gadget
56:54
or a trend, but as a cultural force.
56:58
When I ask the AI about,
57:01
say, a relationship question or something
57:06
that's upsetting me, you know,
57:09
I'm getting something back that's from another perspective.
57:14
Whereas when I write, I'm in kind of a closed box,
57:18
you know, I'm trapped in my own head.
57:22
So with. With AI It.
57:26
It opens me up to compl. It's like I think about a lot,
57:30
about the lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, you know, that I've.
57:33
I found a closet to open that opens me into whole
57:37
other worlds with AI So
57:41
it's far greater, far more encompassing than
57:46
anything in my own head. Which is not to say that I don't
57:50
dream and fantasize. Still, I certainly do. But I find
57:54
it much more helpful to open
57:58
it up to something completely new
58:03
and other and unknown.
58:18
What kinds of humans might these tools encourage us to
58:22
become? What kinds of habits might they
58:26
strengthen? And what kinds of habits might they
58:30
quietly replace? I don't know.
58:34
But I suspect the questions Elisha raised today are coming with us.
58:39
After all, there have always been people who move a little slower than
58:43
the crowd, people who hesitate
58:48
before declaring certainty.
58:51
People are willing to wander into unfamiliar territory
58:56
without any map.
59:00
People who remain curious when everyone else seems ready
59:04
to conclude. I've always had a soft spot for those
59:08
people. Maybe you do, too.
59:12
Until next time, I'm Ari Clive,
59:15
and this is the Pause, providing sanctuary for the
59:20
wild ones.
59:28
Actually, not done yet.
59:33
Maybe. Maybe. Let's talk about this for a couple
59:37
more minutes. Because when sue and I sat down together,
59:41
I had hoped to explore not just simply what AI
59:44
can do, but what it asks of us. What parts of
59:48
being human become important and what parts become easier to neglect.
59:55
You've been listening to the Pause on radio KCM
59:59
Knoxville.