I Am a Bullet : Scenes from an Accelerating Culture - Hardcover

Right now, according to the creators of this intriguing book, acceleration is the main event. It is "the prime physical, technological and even spiritual engine of this moment." The question the book tries to answer is, How do we experience speed? To find out, the author and photographer went on-site to document 10 subcultures that particularly embody the strategy of constant movement as an effort to get outside of time. Probing essays and photo collages examine public auctions, which feed on the increasing frenzy of consumerism, and the infamously speedy Japanese youth culture, where individualistic critique is emerging for the first time and identity is up for grabs. Truckers become a rolling metaphor for America as they constantly fail to escape from time. Demolition derby drivers look for raw catharsis. And in clock-free Las Vegas, "no time is good time and good time is lucky." Then there is the pandemic of gangs on the Sioux reservations in South Dakota, an idea introduced through media bombardment. This is not necessarily easy reading (the typeface itself is often tiny), but it does offer fascinating insight into the American mythological terrain of becoming (which requires perpetual motion) and the consequences of "constantly treading water at the surface of change." --Lesley Reed

We have chosen 10 primary subjects that demonstrate speed as it occurs in global culture right now. These subjects are fairly undocumented or little known, and range from physical speed (the only man to fall through the speed of sound) to the evolution of language (auctioneers) to the power of media as it affects lifestyle (Japan, Gangs on South Dakotas Pine Ridge Reservation) to acceleration as a quality of populism and populist entertainment (Bollywood). Our purpose is to bring a comprehensive understanding of speed to a mass pop culture audience. The objective is to surprise, entertain, and then inform.

This book is unique in that every subject is researched live, on location in the field. We have brought a journalistic approach to a book that is part artwork, part pop culture media, and part scholarly cultural critique. The combination of reportorial narrative, fast-moving and pop-edged photography, and the compelling integrated graphic design treatment by design stars Associates In Science will make this an essay unlike any other on the shelf. This is a whole new approach, with very few precedents.