On Slowness - Toward an Aesthetic of the Contemporary

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 presents velocity.

List of contents

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: On Slowness1. Slow Modernism2. Open Shutter Photography and the Art of Slow Seeing3. Glacial Visions4. Dream|Time Cinema5. Free Fall6. Video and the Slow Art of Interlacing Time7. The Art of Taking a Stroll8. Those Who ReadEpilogue: Slowness and the Future of the HumanitiesNotesIndex

About the author

Lutz Koepnick is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of German and cinema and media arts at Vanderbilt University. He has written widely on film, art, aesthetic theory, and new media aesthetics. His other publications include Framing Attention: Windows on Modern German Culture and Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Power.

Summary

A counterintuitive take on the deceleration of time and its function in contemporary art and culture.

Report

"Lutz Koepnicks understanding of the contemporary phenomenon of slowness is refreshingly optimistic and energetic. It propels the reader to discover his or her own instances of slowness amid the dizzying culture of speed in which we find ourselves enmeshed. Through close and careful analyses of select primarily visual works, Koepnick constructs a thesis of contemporary slowness that is in dialogue with theories of modernity and engaged with the potentiality of contemporaneity. A rigorous thinker, Koepnick brilliantly presents new material and theoretical analyses in a form that is compelling and accessible." - Nora M. Alter, Temple University

Product details

• Authors: Lutz Koepnick, Lutz (Vanderbilt University) Koepnick, Koepnick Lutz
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 04.11.2014
• EAN: 9780231168328
• ISBN: 978-0-231-16832-8
• No. of pages: 336
• Series: Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts; Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Philosophy > General, dictionaries; Philosophy, PHILOSOPHY / Aesthetics, ART / History / Modern (late 19th Century to 1945), ART / History / Contemporary (1945-), PHOTOGRAPHY / History, Philosophy: aesthetics, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / History & Criticism, The arts: general topics