About sluggishness

The discussions about the steadily growing pace of modern life have long become a common place in artistic and humanitarian thought. In response to this universal acceleration, the concept of "slowness" arose, that is, an artificial slowdown in life - including by means of visual art. In his book, Lutz Köpnik comprehends this phenomenon and analyzes artistic practices that deal with an expanded time structure and with doubts, delay and delay, allowing you to slow down the pace and feel the heterogeneous, many -sided course of the present. ” Among them are the movie by Peter Wira and Werner Herzog, photos of Willy Dutch and Hiroyuki Masuyama, media objects of Olafur Eliasson and Janet Cardiff. The author is sure that behind these experiments there is not a nostalgia for an idyllic past at all, but the desire to penetrate the essence of the present and think about the nature of time. Lutz Köpnik is a professor at Vanderbilt University, a specialist in visual art and intellectual history