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Cutting Slack extended until February 15th

02/01/2009 - 15/02/2009 (tz: Europe/Amsterdam)

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? Kicking off the new year we would slowly like to ease into this weekend forum, riding the slack tide to consider these questions. In suitably slack fashion. Moderator: Stephen Wright. Special guest: Randall Szott

Participants: Prayas Abhinav, Brian Holmes, McKenzie Wark, Federico Geller, Felicity Scott and Katherine Carl, Chris Rojek, Andy Abbot, Karen Andreassian, Chris Carlsson, Sal Randolph, Hideous Beasts, Renée Ridgway

Please add your comments at 'Cutting Slack-Paradoxes of Slackerdom' blog entry

 

How many slackers does it take to slacken off a non-slacker?

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