SLOW ARTIST STATEMENT

I started to notice my father moving differently, his movements very slow – almost as if underwater. I wondered if it was the intense loss of my mother who had recently died that had changed him.  The mechanics of his body. As if grief were weighing him down. It turned out to be Parkinson's. The term for it is bradykinesia, meaning slowness of movement, and it can have the very disarming effect of the appearance of abnormal stillness. I am fascinated and heart broken by his daily routine. The way he moves around the house. The way his hands shake, the worsening of this shake. It is like a dance he performs unwillingly. It is both devastating and strangely beautiful.

Soon after his diagnosis, I found 4000 slides, under the basement stairs, all in carousels. My father is an amateur photographer. This sparked something in me, I started to think of old fashioned zoetropes, early 'cinema', and the animation of images. When I googled zoetrope I found this on Wikipedia "The name zoetrope was composed from the Greek root words life and turning as a translation of wheel of life." The connection between my father, his aging body, slide carousels, spinning images, the wheel of life. All of these elements became entangled and through osmosis have come together as SLOW.

In essence SLOW is a kind of zoetrope. It is an enormous human powered cylinder that people must spin in order to get the images to animate. When the cylinder is still, the man is still, locked in a small repeated movement, hands shaking, perhaps lifting a leg ever so slightly or taking a small step. He will look ghostly, almost like a hologram locked inside an infinite micro loop.

There is something greater here for me than an exploration of Parkinson's or a piece about my father. The functionality of the piece requires a number of people to spin the cylinder in order to get the images moving, the man moving, at a steady pace. Hence the subtitle, “A Participatory Meditation on Movement, Memory, and Time”. They spin the cylinder for others as they will only be able to see the screen closest to them. They perform an act of service, to spin the cylinder, to uphold the old man and to do it all for a community of people who can watch from a distance.

My recent work's focus was the architecture of installation: how to engage an audience in a non-traditional expanded cinema setting. With the creation of SLOW I continue my research into the architecture of installation. Focussing on how to design work with an eye to using the viewer's experience as a central part of the mechanics of the work itself. I am drawing from the traditions of what I would call active installation by artists such as Janet Cardiff who requires the viewer to participate by moving in space and Menashe Kadishman in whose work Shalekhet the viewer becomes the sound artist.

Naomi Jaye/2025

This installation is generously funded by the Ontario Arts Council,
Toronto Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts.

For partnership or sponsorship inquiries, please contact: tremendousproductionsinc@gmail.com