Contemporary cultural style boosts transparency and instantaneity. These are values absorbed
from our current economic conditions of "disintermediation": cutting out the middleman. Like
Uber but for art. Immediacy names this style to make sense of what we lose when the
contradictions of twenty-first-century capitalism demand that aesthetics negate mediation.
Surging realness as an aesthetic program synchs with the economic imperative to intensify
circulation when production stagnates. "Flow" is the ultimate twenty-first-century buzzword
but speedy circulation grinds art down to the nub. And the bad news is that political turmoil
and social challenges require more mediation. Collective will inspiring ideas and deliberate
construction are the only way out but our dominant style forgoes them. Considering original
streaming TV popular literature artworld trends and academic theories Immediacy explains
the recent obsession with immersion and today' s intolerance of representation and points
to alternative forms in photography TV novels and constructive theory that prioritize
distance impersonality and big ideas instead.
