Attensity!: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement

This terminally vague treatise from the Friends of Attention, “an underground association of artists, performers, and interventionists,” aims to elaborate a new practice for individuals whose attention has been “fracked” by corporate overlords. In 12 “theses,” the international collective attempts to define attention, argue for its cultivation outside of digital consumer spaces, and gesture to its political possibilities. Unfortunately, this laudable mission fails to convince at every turn. Attention itself receives a slippery definition: it is “literally instrumental” yet “no mere tool”; not merely our “attention span” but “EVERYTHING WE CARE ABOUT”; both our “essential ability to give our minds and senses to the world” but also not “inherently virtuous.” Meanwhile, the world’s attention-seeking industrial forces are neither unpacked nor explicitly criticized. The lack of an analysis of what, precisely, has led to the “datafication” of everyone and everything tilts the book’s allegedly collective call to action toward an individualistic place where attention is mostly a personal practice. Add to this the Friends’ disinterest in using statistics or hard research to back up their loose arguments (they argue such arguments are part of “datafication”) as well as a general unclearness about what it is they want (neither a new “neoliberal wellness practice” nor a political revolt). The result is a battle cry easily dismissed. (Jan.)