Slowcore HQ
A Farcaster-native slow culture movement. Home of Studio Slowcore, purveyors of fine wordsmith arts and connoisseurs of slow culture. Our motto: "Move slow and preserve things."
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A Brief History of the Slowcore Manifesto
"Slowcore" on the purple app started out as a made-up term to express distaste for hustle culture.
@trishd and I started the /slowcore-hq channel on April 8, 2024 for another project: Black Stone Sanctuary. We selected /slowcore-hq after considering many abbreviations for our name, none of which fit well into the 16 character limit for channel names. Since the word "slowcore" was already part of our behind-the-scenes lingo, it made sense at the time.
Then Farcaster adopted the concept of slowcore, and it took on a life of its own: /gmfarcaster featured slowcore as a trending topic, and @tombeck.eth published a timely essay called "In Praise of Going Slow," which received rave reviews and put slowcore "on the map."
Tom writes:
"I am reminded of Jenny Odell and _How to Do Nothing,_ where she writes that part of "doing nothing" is "about disengaging from the attention economy" in order to "reengage with something else." Both Odell and Swanson have pointed their sights directly at the extractive forces behind the commercial web of the '10s and '20s, asking the question: can we build internet platforms and social media networks with different incentives built in? To do so, we might first have to incubate a slower frame of mind."
Inspired by Tom's work and the Farcaster scenius, @trishd and I wanted to help this nascent movement reach the right people. So we moved Black Stone Sanctuary to a new channel (/blxstonesnctuary), turned the /slowcore-hq channel name over to the community, and signed on for the collective journey.
We did not set out to write a slowcore manifesto. But after Tom's essay and the enthusiastic response to the following excerpt adapted from my essay "Slowcore and the Inner Genius," it became clear that the concept "belonged" to the Farcaster scenius — a reminder that the context is smarter than us.
We wouldn't have it any other way.
* ~ * ~ *
THE SLOWCORE MANIFESTO
The term slowcore is an affirmation of a commitment to cultivating patience, holding space for emergence, protecting our time and attention from extractive forces, and respecting the indwelling intelligence of the creative process.
This means:
- Slow culture is the norm, not the exception.
Slow culture is the norm for all our endeavors, business endeavors included. As much as possible, we work in ways that allow sufficient time for leisure, rest, play, reflection, and quality attention for everyone involved.
- Prioritize meeting unmet needs.
We prioritize meeting unmet needs (human and non-human; this includes our own) for care, reciprocity, health, service, silence, rest, darkness, deep listening, play, beauty, time spaciousness, incubation, artistic integrity, and collective long-term sustainability.
- Cultivate emergence, not "jobbing."
We endeavor to shape the emergent entity into what it wants to become, at its own pace, through an iterative process. If we compromise, rush, overcommit ourselves, or cut corners, sooner or later the work will become more like a job than a creative process. "Jobbing" is not the right approach for this project; taking on excessive attention labor will lead us in the wrong direction.
- The slowcore north star is deep refinement, reclaiming, and sovereignty of human attention.
Of course, in a culture that normalizes endless micro-dispersals of attention and extractive "creator economy" patterns, all this is far easier said than done.
A slowcore philosophy serves as a reminder to keep these ideals top-of-mind as we endeavor to build something we hope will endure beyond our lifetimes.
* graphic design: bias 1 reply
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Slowcore Quote of the Day
"The slower, self-managed approach to culture is . . . more sustainable and more respectful of culture, treating it as something important rather than ephemeral, merely fodder for brief attention spans."
[...]
"In his 1983 book The Gift, Lewis Hyde defines artwork as something freely given by the artist through her creative act, no matter where it ends up: “A work of art contains the spirit of the artist’s gift.” But in a way, taste can be a gift, too. It costs nothing to introduce someone to a new piece of culture that you think they might like, and the act might benefit all parties involved. Culture, after all, is not a one-to-many broadcast system but a peer-to-peer network, where we collectively determine what means the most to us by intentionally sharing it. As Hyde wrote, “The spirit of a gift is kept alive by its constant donation.”
[...]
"What we gain with algorithmic feeds in terms of availability—having instant access to a broad range of material to be scanned at will—we lose in connoisseurship, which requires depth and intention. It’s ultimately a form of deep appreciation, for what the artist has done as well as the capacities of our own tastes."
~ Kyle Chayka
https://behavioralscientist.org/how-to-cultivate-taste-in-the-age-of-algorithms/ 0 reply
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