Slowness In Modern Art

Increasingly in the world of modern art, and especially since the 1970’s, there has been a shift towards the aesthetic of slowness. This is particularly in response to the speeding up of the human experience ever since the introduction of modern machines, both industrial and digital, that cut production and response times in half. Prime examples of these genres of art include open-shutter photography, time-lapse photography and mixed media art works. Reigning as an anthology of these works is Lutz Keopnieck’s book On Slowness: Towards an Aesthetic of the Contemporary, in which he attempts to detail and comment on works which build towards this all-important slowness. In this day and age, practices such as life hacking and multitasking have
They block out a set time to go to experience something, or glance at it as they go along their merry way. The most symbolic piece discussed in Koepnick’s book is the frozen Beamer, Your Mobile Expectations, by Olafur Elliason. In this work, the ice represents multiple forms of slowness, physically keeping the car in place, even though it probably wouldn’t make it far outside its showing area even without it. Furthermore Ice is known for its properties in preserving things against time. When one wants something to last longer it can be frozen, and this is done with everything from frozen peas to cryogenically frozen human heads. Ice is also what forms glaciers, and this features prominently in another one of Eliasson’s works The Glacier Series. These massive formations not only form slowly but also move slowly, much slower than the human eye can perceive, much less the attention span wishes to
This is interesting because it is entirely possible that the whole universe, and not simply humanity, feels the need to rush faster and faster towards this invisible unknown. “The previous chapters of this book have theorized slowness not merely as an attempt to decelerate and invert the speed of modern life, but as a mode of movement, perception and experience that allows us to engage with the present in all its temporal municipality.” Now it is more important than ever to be able to fully open our perception and to be able to engage with slow art, as this may prove to be our only hope to avoid being swallowed up in the universes mad rush to this omega