Anna Kornbluh’s book Immediacy; or the Style of Too Late Capitalism (Verso, 2024) is a dazzlingly incisive diagnosis of our dominant aesthetic mode of urgency, flow, frictionlessness, thinness and instantaneity. Describing the “hulling of artforms down to effective transfer” and closely intertwined with the dynamics of 21st-century capitalist production and circulation, immediacy’s influence is visible in Marvel movies and mental health apps, autofiction and Amazon Prime. In this issue we take immediacy as our theme, considering what is lost in our always-on, “it is what it is” paradigm.

This spring, the 21st century’s most important artist Victor Burgin interrogates the image, Hannah Zeavin reads our minds and Benjamin Bratton decodes International Art English. Oliver Payne levels up, Christina Moon unpacks the intimacy of international shipping and we map out a history of immersive art. We speak to Anna Kornbluh on immediacy and mediation, Anton Jäger lays out what’s populist about protest, and Omer Asim talks to us about the pain of losing Sudan. We publish new fiction from Anne Serre and analyse contemporary art’s fixation with the funfair.

Louboutin shows us the silver lining, while photographer Xiaopeng Yuan holds the phone. We get totally immersed with Sabato Tod’s debut collection for Gucci, hit the hay with FILA Box and make friends in high places with Hubert Crabières (we recommend you zoom in yourself).

Plus, we publish interviews with Holly Pester on polyphony in the context of the houseshare, Alessandra Sanguinetti on humans and other animals, Anna Biller on dark romance and Bruce LaBruce on the pull of Pasolini, and much, much more.