The futurism of the instant

And so, after the twentieth century's Futurism of long-term History, denounced by Daniel Lévy and celebrated by Marinetti, the time will then have come for this futurism of the instant, which Octavio Paz spoke to us about, observing bitterly: 'The moment is uninhabitable, just like the future.'

It is this form of insalubrious uninhabiting that today speaks to us through the exoduses, through the distant exiles, through all this dislocation of expatriation that is only ever deportation in disguise – not, as in days gone by, propelling people towards the extermination of the camps, towards genocide, any more, but driving them towards externalization, the outsourcing, of the ultracity to come, the genocide of the twilight of places, the exhaustion of the resources produced by the geodiversity of the terrestrial globe.

Paul Virilio, The Futurism of the Instant (Polity Press, 2010) pp. 23-24

Is this immobility that which precedes the awakening of the elements, or that of the body fallen into a mineral sleep?

Octavio Paz, "Chillida: From iron to light" in Chillida (Pittsburgh International Series: 1979) p. 11