Still in the slow-art spirit of my last post... There’s no way I’ll be able to make it up to the North East. And I’ll admit some of the events sound similarly gimmicky. But the ‘As Slow As Possible’ Festival seems on the right track... which of course is the same place as the slow lane. (Personally I’m particularly taken by the car not filmed crashing into a wall in slow motion, but actually happening at that speed.)
There’s something sublime about, rather than faking another world, simply screwing with our sense of pace about this one until it is seen anew. And merely speeding it up seems way too close with what’s happening already. Slow is the way to go!
Idle speculation from someone who will never see it, but perhaps the festival’s main fault is its concentration on media which already exist in time – performances, installations, music, films etc. There’s plenty of books and comics which stamp their own sense of time upon you. I remember in my teens first seeing pages from Koike and Kojima’s ’Lone Wolf and Cub’ (see below) after being reared on a hectic diet of British and American action comics, and barely being able to believe my eyes! Okay, you could theoretically read it through fast, just like you could wolf down a fine meal. But anyone who does simply won’t enjoy it!
More on the festival here.
A brief excerpt from John Cage’s ’ORGAN2/ASLSP’. (The whole thing takes 639 minutes, which is a bit beyond YouTube’s length limits... part of the appeal, of course, is that this is something which can’t be caught on YouTube!)
Jem Finer’s Slowplayer:
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