Slowness in Urgency, Urgently Slow
Can practicing slowness in urgency become a strategy for resisting realities shaped by the ongoing impacts of capitalism and white supremacy? Artist-archivist Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski connects our insidious digital habits to humanity’s wider planetary condition, asking us to consider their cognitive and environmental impact and practice intentional slowness as a strategy for reimagining frameworks for resolution and healing. And in an accompanying interview, Sowinski expands further on what she describes as “urgent slowness,” contrasts the joy of being part of a network with the often unspoken complexities of collective work, and explains her interest in producing work from a place of rest.
This contribution and its accompanying AC Courses pathway encourage an approach that advocates for “slowness in an Anthropocene hurry,” a space to think, reflect, and rest as an integral way to develop strategy alongside solutions. What does it mean to be urgently slow in this undeniably urgent conjuncture?
During 2020’s The Shape of a Practice event, I was introduced to Beate Geissler and Oliver Sann’s work Hopium Economy (2019), which interrogates the interconnectedness between substance dependencies and humanity’s wider planetary condition. My contribution Slowness in Urgency, Urgently Slow (2021) attempts to apply a similar consideration of “habit,” in relation to an increasing reliance on digital tools against a backdrop of rising CO2 emissions.
The work is concerned with the urgent need to consider the effects of our insidious habits of digital consumption, and the associated environmental costs and cognitive dissonance when browsing, for example, an online collection of pathway materials. How do we as consumers and producers demonstrate a sense of accountability? How do we confront the contradictions—such as the environmental impacts of digital knowledge production and exchange—that lie within the Anthropocene, and place them at the center of research, practice, strategies, and solutions? Beyond merely counting/recording/representing increasing levels of data usage and expanding carbon footprints,1 can intentionally practicing slowness in urgency become a valid strategy to relearn, reset, and reimagine the realities of the longstanding and ongoing impacts of capitalism and white supremacy?
This reflective contribution and accompanying pathway aims to grapple with this reality, bringing together a selection of material that encourages the reimagining of frameworks of resolution, healing2 and problem solving through a lens and practice of rest and stillness.
Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, on a friend’s farm in Harris, MN. © Stacy Sowinski, all rights reserved
