THE SLOWLY PROJECT. TAKE YOUR TIME - NEW YORK

 

This video comes from a series of performances in the streets of Manhattan between 2005 and 2011

.
The performance consists in moving in ‘slow motion’ on daily life, walking so slowly to become a shocking figure for people in the city.
The project is a work above society and our lives but also a work about time: to take our time, in life and in art, beyond formal, stereotyped, and social ways. Slowness becomes a metaphor of a contrast between personal time and social time, between interiority and exteriority.

I consider my videos as portraits of a specific society, city, country, because everything that happens reflects the identity of the place. Each video is completely different from the other, even when it’s made from the same performance in different locations. The Slowly Project is composed by the same performance in different cities and contexts.
Seeing the differences of the videos it’s a way to investigate the differences of the places. The reactions, the noises, the buildings, the people in New York were very special and specific. The video is like a 'story' of that

I consider my videos like paintings, books and sculptures.
I carve them, beginning with hours and hours of shootings as they were a huge marble stock, cutting and selecting piece after piece in order to obtain the final shape.
I paint every single second of the video, deciding colors and combining sequences, in order to arrive to the final pattern.
I write the chapters and the scenes as a story, where I give a sense to each step following the other. And I mix the music with the intent to give voice to the whole levels of lecture implicit in the work.

I use only original shootings taken during my performances. No studio shootings or actor interactions are used to edit my videos. What is shown is part of what ‘really’ happened and it’s chance one of the main hero of the work.

I’d like that people reflect upon how difficult is to perform perfectly in ‘slow motion’, controlling each muscle movements not to go faster for hours and hours in the day.
I consider ‘taking our time’ in life and society as difficult as this performance but, nevertheless, necessary

The 2011 interactive performance was done in Manhattan February 28 and March 2, 2011 for the 5th Global Day of Slow LIving