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Title details for On Slowness by Lutz Koepnick - Available

On Slowness

Toward an Aesthetic of the Contemporary

by Lutz Koepnick
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Speed is an obvious facet of contemporary society, whereas slowness has often been dismissed as conservative and antimodern. Challenging a long tradition of thought, Lutz Koepnick instead proposes we understand slowness as a strategy of the contemporary—a decidedly modern practice that gazes firmly at and into the present's velocity.
As he engages with late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century art, photography, video, film, and literature, Koepnick explores slowness as a critical medium to intensify our temporal and spatial experiences. Slowness helps us register the multiple layers of time, history, and motion that constitute our present. It offers a timely (and untimely) mode of aesthetic perception and representation that emphasizes the openness of the future and undermines any conception of the present as a mere replay of the past. Discussing the photography and art of Janet Cardiff, Olafur Eliasson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Michael Wesely; the films of Peter Weir and Tom Tykwer; the video installations of Douglas Gordon, Willie Doherty, and Bill Viola; and the fiction of Don DeLillo, Koepnick shows how slowness can carve out spaces within processes of acceleration that allow us to reflect on alternate temporalities and durations.

  • Creators

  • Series

    Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 7, 2014

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780231538251

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780231538251
      • File size: 27733 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      October 15, 2014

      For Koepnick (Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of German, Cinema and Media Arts, Vanderbilt Univ.; Framing Attention), slowness isn't a past fondness for simpler times or a Luddite backlash against technology but instead a modern aesthetic principle that certain artists and authors use in their works to slow down and allow the viewer or reader to reflect on the moment. He begins with a brief overview of past movements, such as Italian Futurism, that sought to show that progress and modernism were tied to speed and velocity, and then examines contrasting artistic movements aimed at "expanding the space of the present" through the use of slowness. The later chapters are dedicated to specific mediums, including film, photography, and literature, in which artists, directors, and authors like Werner Herzog and Don DeLillo used the concept to examine specific moments in detail. VERDICT Koepnick presents very valid arguments for the modernism of slowness and shows how it can be used to stop, or at least slow down, time and permit us to analyze the present. Readers with an interest in philosophy of art and aesthetics will find this a satisfying read.--Scott Duimstra, Capital Area Dist. Lib., Lansing, MI

      Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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