AV Festival 12 : As Slow As Possible
International Festival of Art, Technology, Music and Film
Newcastle, Gateshead, Middlesbrough and Sunderland (UK) 1st - 31st March 2012 [PDF] website
In the run-up to London 2012 with its motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger” we propose an alternative slower pace and relaxed rhythm to counter the accelerated speed of today.
Titled after ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible) by pioneering artist John Cage, the theme explores how artists have stretched, measured and marked the passage of time. Some works last the full 31 days, others are infinite in duration or move imperceptibly slowly: 14 seconds become 31 minutes, one hour becomes 24, and we can all dream together in a 12-hour sleep concert
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| Century of Birthing (2011/Lav Diaz/The Philippines) |
Slow Cinema is a series of over thirty landmark films from leading international filmmakers, focused around slowness, and interwoven through AV Festival 12.
From early pioneers to new releases, Slow Cinema presents films devoted to stillness, contemplation and the everyday. Providing a retreat from conventional cinematic speed, they create a more relaxed rhythm, heightening awareness of every minute and second spent watching them. In contrast to other first-release festivals, the curated focus of AV Festival brings a critical framework and focus to this important area, and the time and space for each film to breathe.
Projections :
- Fred Kelemen: Fate / Verhaengnis; Frost; Nightfall / Abendland
- Lisandro Alonso: La Libertad; Los Muertos; Liverpool
- Lav Diaz: Elegy To The Visitor From The Revolution; Melancholia; Century of Birthing; Butterflies Have No Memories
- Ben Rivers: Slow Action; Two Years At Sea
- Bela Tarr: The Turin Horse
- Fergus Daly & Katherine Waugh: The Art of Time
- James Benning: Nightfall
- Sharon Lockhart: Double Tide
- Andrei Tarkovsky: Stalker
- Alexander Sokurov: Russian Ark
- Cristi Puiu: Aurora
- Abbas Kiarostami: Five
- Richard Fenwick: Exhaustion
- Nuri Bilge Ceylan: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
- Bruno Dumont: Hors Satan
- Pedro Costa: Colossal Youth
- Albert Serra: Honor of the Knights
- Sergio Caballero: Finisterrae
- Pablo Giorgelli: Las Acacias
- Carlos Reygadas: Stellet Licht
- Rirkrit Tiravanija: Lung Neaw Visits His Neighbours
- Jia Zhang-ke: Still Life
- Sivaroj Kongsakul: Eternity
- Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Syndromes and a Century
- Kim Ki Duk: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring
- Raya Martin: Independicia
- Ben Russell: Let Each One Go Where He May
Taking its point of departure from this year's AV Festival theme As Slow As Possible (after John Cage), this symposium seeks to investigate how we might activate temporal concepts which are resistant to those normalized in mainstream commercially driven cultural forms.
How are artists, composers or musicians exploring Time in ways that often utilize the latest digital technologies but also challenge their conventional deployment? The subject of 'Slowness', albeit in its most varied manifestations embracing multiple non-linear 'speeds' and rhythms (and thus refusing any simplistic polarization with 'speed' as such), will provide a central theme for the panel discussion, and ideas relating to how Time can be multiplied, diversified, folded and suspended in contemporary art and culture will also be examined.
Panels :
- As slow As Possible symposium (1st March 2012): Eric Alliez, Paul Morley, Laura Cull, John Mullarkey, Katherine Waugh, Rebecca Shatwell
- Slow Cinema Discussion (9 March 2012): Fred Kelemen, Lav Diaz, Lisandro Alonso, Ben Rivers, Jonathan Romney, George Clark, Matthew Flanagan
Articles :
- Lav Diaz : As long as it takes (George Clark; 20.02.2012)
Webcast :
- Radio Boredcast (31 days = 744 hours casting) by Vicki Bennett
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Unspoken Cinema resource :
- CCC bibliography
- Slower or Contemplative? / Wasted time (Romney) / Slow films, easy life (Sight and Sound) / Slowish Obsession, ter / Re-dramatization of the un-dramatic / Slow Parody (Sight&Sound) / To America everything foreign is SLOW / The Post-Tarkovskian bandwagon (Pigott) / Amusement arc
- Slow film festival (Alan Fair) / Contemplative TV cruise (Hurtigruten Norwegian Coastal Express/ NRK 134 hours of live TV)
- Foster-child of silence and slow time (Keats) / La lenteur (Kundera) / Lenteur cérémonielle (Le Monde) / La Lenteur (Bratu)
- Dan Kois Syndrome (Proud Boredom) 1-2-3 / Long and boring art movies (The Guardian) / "Boring" is not a critical argument / On Being Bored (Phillips) / Boredom (Charney) / Time-Stilled Space-Slowed: How Boredom Matters (Ben Anderson, 2004)
- Représentation du temps / Temps et récit (Ricœur) / Temps respecté (Martin) /
- Sushi conveyor filmmaking / Do nothing for 2 min / A Slow Year (conceptual videogame) / 10 min of Life at the time / Who said Contemplation was slow? (time-lapse)
- Starting from basics all over again / Losing the ability to contemplate art for itself / Losing the ability to contemplate nature for itself / We are losing our Listening (Treasure)
- Tacita Dean (The Guardian)
