Under the logic of capitalism, there can be no greater luxury than the luxury of time or, rather, the crime of boredom. For to be bored is not to have made full use of time, to be inefficient, to waste time. If mainstream cinema’s aim is to provide “escapism” from boredom by utilizing “various forms of speed (activity-filled narratives, rapid camera movement, fast cuts, up-tempo soundtracks, and so on) to keep us entertained” (Misek 2012, 135, 137), the slow art film, on the other hand, “anticipates a spectator not only eager to clarify the value of wasted time and uneconomical temporalities but also curious about the impact of broadening what counts as productive human labor” (Schoonover 2012, 65). A cinema of slowness, therefore, invites us to reconsider the value of waste…
Song Hwee Lim, Tsai Ming-liang and a Cinema of Slowness (2014)
is what gives beauty to her eye, inhabitation
to her tender-taken bones, is what illumines
all her skin with satin glow
when love blows over, turning
as the leaf turns in the wind
and, with that shock of recognition, shows
its other side, the joy, the sort of terror of
a dancer going off
Poesia Concreta / Konkrete Poesie, Goethe-Institut, München, 1974. Cover: Ferdinand Kriwet
Aintree Estate 4, Fulham, London, LCC Architect’s Department, 1962-67
Photo: Simon Phipps
A. V. Harrison, from This Series, 1970-75, in ABC, Edited by Jeremy Adler, The National Poetry Centre, London, 1975, Edition of 200
