Immediatism (1994) is a short book by anarchist writer Hakim Bey (pseudonym of Peter Lamborn Wilson) that extends the ideas first developed in The Temporary Autonomous Zone. Where TAZ explored fleeting zones of autonomy that evade state control, Immediatism focuses on the recovery of art, play, and community through direct, face-to-face creation.
Bey argues that much of culture has been captured by mediation: mass media, commodification, and spectacle. Against this, immediatism is a practice of making that happens in the present and in common, without expectation of permanence, publicity, or profit. A handful of friends gathering to read poetry, improvise music, or cook together may be closer to real art than any institutional form. What matters is intensity of presence rather than circulation of product.
Immediatism positions creative life as an everyday insurgency, reclaiming joy and meaning from the abstractions of media and market. Like TAZ, it insists that autonomy need not wait for the future—it can be enacted now in shared acts of immediacy, however small, fragile, or transient.
See also: The Temporary Autonomous Zone
Image from The Anarchist Library.
