/// EXPLORING THE LUXURY OF SPEED ///
The only genuinely modern pleasure.
Speed, the sensation one gets when driving fast, was described by Aldous Huxley as the single new pleasure invented by modernity. El Solitario is a virtuoso exploration of Huxley’s claim with a hint of Hunter S. Thompson along the way.
El Solitario plunges full-throttle into speed’s “adrenaline aesthetics” .
El Solitario shows how the experience of speed has always been political and how it has affected nearly all aspects of modern culture. Primarily a result of the mass-produced automobile, the experience of speed became the quintessential way for individuals to experience modernity, to feel modernity in their bones.
El Solitario plunges full-throttle into speed’s “adrenaline aesthetics,” and describes how speed changed understandings of space, distance, chance, and violence; how the experience of speed is commodified in the dawning era of mass consumption; and how society is incited to abhor slowness and desire speed.
We examine how people are trained by new media to see, hear, and sense speed, and how speed, demanded of the efficient assembly-line worker, is given back to that worker as the chief thrill of leisure.
And most importantly we question how speed quickly became something to be patrolled by governments.
GEAR TO EXPLORE THE LUXURY OF SPEED
