Sustainability, Minimalism, and Slow Microtextualities

Abstract

The conclusions of the Club of Rome report on the limits to growth exposed the connection between increased production and consumption, on the one hand, and ecological degradation, on the other. Since then, several proposals have been put forward supporting degrowth and the Slow Movement. In this article, I will reflect first on the concept of “sustainability” applied to the field of online creation in relation to the so-called digital sobriety, which emerges in opposition to an inflationary and multi-screen cultural model, characterized by its large consumption of data and energy as well as by its rebound effects. Secondly, a parallel will be established between “digital minimalism” and microtextuality, since both phenomena appeal to a series of values coinciding with those used to describe minimalist poetics. Finally, an Anthropocene reading of slowness will be carried out as a starting point to imagining and creating with a greater awareness of materiality.