VIDEO: Faster Slower Future #2

Despite the extreme crises that the capitalist system has recently undergone, a post-capitalistic alternative seems more unthinkable than ever. We simply thunder on at an ever-faster pace. What we describe as ‘the left’ is breathlessly searching for ways out. New social, grassroots movements are increasingly calling for things to slow down. On the other hand, in recent years a new way of thinking about this speeding up has arisen – why not destroy capitalism using its own methods? Why not allow society to go into overdrive and pass into a new order?

During a two-day programme, we will be taking a detailed look at this Faster-Slower contradiction. Central to this is the philosophy of a recent political-philosophical movement: left accelerationism. This movement is part of a larger (abstract) philosophical movement: speculative realism. We give both supporters and opponents the chance to speak, but above all seek out challenging suggestions as to how to rethink the future.

The central guests are Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, who together wrote the #ACCELERATE MANIFESTO for an Accelerationist Politics and the book Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work.

SATURDAY 22/10
15:45 – Patricia Reed: Politics and Complexity Mediation
If substantial political transformation today is not possible without engaging the entanglement of socio-economic-juridical-climactic realities; it follows that complexity must become a navigable ‘object’ for politicization. Put simply, we must find ways to mediate complexity in order to leverage our situation for the benefit of the many. These steps are a requirement in order to politicize often invisible or intangible structures that prescribe/deny modes of acting in the world. As the understanding our reality supersedes our current cognitive and phenomenological grasp, this talk will look at how human/machinic intelligence coupling both dismantles classical epistemic separations, and how it can serve the demands of our socio-political world, aiming towards its transformation.
• Patricia Reed is an artist, writer and designer. Recent exhibitions include those at Homeworks 7 (LB); Witte de With (NL); and Haus der Kulturen der Welt (DE). She has contributed chapters to Reinventing Horizons; Dea ex machina (with/as Laboria Cuboniks); #ACCELERATE: The Accelerationist Reader; and The Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism vol II, amongst others.