Slow Landscapes: an exhibition catalogue

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October 31, 2012 - January 16, 2013

GradComD Gallery

Pratt Institute, New York


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... We are losing our ability to be with a fine artwork so I make

work that necessitates that time from the person.

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Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo and Jason Wozniak

A conversation about time, silent transformations,

and the hard work of attending


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Jason Wozniak:Lets start with the obvious questions - whylandscapes and why slowness?

Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo:This show came out of my visit toArgentinas Perito Moreno, the fastest moving glacier in theworld, at three meters a day. In the video I shot thats in theinteractive installation I caught a little piece of ice falling,but its mostly perceived as a still image. And since then,when Im in nature, I have kept recording the landscape. Soits really been the videos that prompted this body of work.

Slowness as a project started in Guatemala, working with

artisans for a project I coordinate called DEED, and becom-ing hyper-aware of the connectivity and acceleration inwhich we are often immersed. I would feel an anxiety ofwithdrawal upon arriving there, and then feel a culturalshock when back in New York. It felt like I was part of anexperiment where I was forced to slow down and then I wasdropped back into accelerated New York.

Some of the techniques in the show emerged from my firsttrip to Japan several years ago. I found myself at Shinagawa

train station during rush hour, without a video camera andtherefore taking a lot of photos. I my studio I started to playwith how I could communicate the fast pace of the place just

through still images. Thats how I developed the layeredtechnique. Ive been working on slowness both as a concept

as well as in terms of the media that Im using, photographyand video, and really exploring that fine line between whenan image ceases to be still and when it is moving. And sothats a question in all of these.

Is the video in the installation Slow Landscapes a stillimage? Its not. Its moving. And I thought that since Id beenworking on that idea for a while but focusing on cities, itcould be really interesting to ask that question with regardsto the natural landscape, which is always in movement and

yet we perceive as still.

JW: Layering photos and juxtaposing images is this a wayto manifest multiplicities of times?

CLJ: Correct. Since 2007 when I developed the physicallylayered works, I have been working in that split momentwhen still becomes moving, and vice versa. If the photo-graph is most commonly known as the medium that pausestime, my challenge, in an age of Instagram in which anyone

can take a beautiful photo, is to do something new with themedium. Hence, I think about the photograph as multipletimes, and not just a paused one.

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JW: Some of your work calls for coevalness one must bewilling to share time with the scenes.

CLJ: Yes, I make work that requires a certain duration fromthe viewer. The viewing of art, and especially media art, hasbecome very accelerated. We are losing our ability to bewith a fine artwork so I make work that necessitates thattime from the person. If someone rushes by one of thevideos, they will see it as a projected still image and not asthe moving one that it is.

JW: So is there a heterochrony? A variety of times within the

image, or is there monochrony, where theres one rhythm orone time that dominates?

CLJ: I dont know what you mean by the difference of rhythmand time. I would say that the rhythm is the same, but theduration is more than singular. The way I edit my printedworks is with a consistent pace from one shot to the next orfrom one layer to the next. The duration of the work islonger than any single frame would communicate. It is theentire duration of when I shot the first one and the last one.

So, yes, I would say they contain multiple times.

JW: So your art confronts us with the multiplicity of time?

CLJ: Yes.

JW: Its nice. I like that. Lets move on to humans as part oflandscapes, and sharing rhythms. For some reason theskiers in Ambush and Lower Ambush, 26 Seconds make meponder this.

CLJ: Yes, that is precisely what I was hoping people wouldponder with the skiers. The show would not exist if it wasn'tfor humans as part of landscapes. I, as artist, in thoselandscapes, am disrupting them, or connecting with theirslowness, or thinking about how still they are because I am

so fast. The landscape around the skiers does not changeother than the snow under each body. It is a one-wayrelationship, so in a way I criticize what I hope for in theother work - to connect with the landscape in a two-waycommunication.

JW: The Serpentine Line again makes an appearance inthis work.

CLJ: Yes it does and I love that you were the first to notice

that in my previous The Shops, 96 Seconds (2010). What isinteresting is that now the skiers reveal the S-line, whichwe previously saw in the Time Warner Center, in the most

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Digital video, electronics, computerEdition 1 of 34 loop2012

Slow Landscapes

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creating these photographic works that dont necessarilyadhere to the traditional definition of photography. Thatswhy I was asking you, well, is it one frame or the entire grid?

I think the entire grid captures transience. If you were to justlook at one of the images, probably not, except for, perhaps,the last one because of the accumulation of time in it.

JW: Its funny because in the triptych Untitled (PeritoMoreno, Argentina) I can feel the ice blocks moving on thewater. Maybe its because Ive been there, to the Morenoglacier, that I can look at the image on the right and some-how feel that this is disappearing and melting.

CLJ: Oh, you do?

JW: Yes, I dont know why, but, again, maybe its becauseIve actually been to the place.

CLJ: Well, in the triptych I wanted there to be overlapsbetween the images so that people will focus on the spacein between one frame and the other, and so theyre thinkingabout the transition of one to the other; in that way itcreates this movement across the images.JW: So on the one hand theres this idea that the imagespossess times that you experienced, right? And on the otherhand, maybe its possible through the image for the specta-

tor to also be in touch with that time?

CLJ: Yes.

JW: So thats a pretty interesting idea, but it seems like thatonly happens for some people and not others. For somepeople the image is just an object, but for other people theyactually can experience the time that you are experiencing.

CLJ: Yes. But its also something that Ive seen in my worksince 2007 since Ive been working in this moment betweenstill and moving and trying to create artwork that requires aviewer to slow down. There are inevitably people who will

just walk by. Very few people realize that the installationSlow Landscapes is an interactive piece because they dontnecessarily stop and notice how their body disrupts theimage, or how it doesnt. Ive been encouraged to put up alittle sign that indicates that.

JW: Really?

CLJ: Yes, but Ive been hesitant to do that.

continues...

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39 Archival printsEdition 1 of 319in x 13in each, 14ft 1in x 4ft 9in total2012

Ambush and Lower Ambush, 26 Seconds

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JW: So you have a sensibility to all of this. You are quitetrained.

CLJ: I think once you start looking at and listening to theworld through lenses and headphones you find that youcatch these moments. In Lake Sisga, it was a house that mysister and her husband and kids rented for New Years inColombia last year. I woke up early and there was fog on thelake, so I set up the camera on a lawn chair and just let itrecord. And then afterwards watching the footage I saw thebird.

JW: So sometimes the ideas form as youre experiencing it,

and other times you capture it and then later look at whatyou have captured?

CLJ: I would say all of this gets formed after I see what Ivecaptured. I see the framing, I see who walked through it,what happened. In Ambush and Lower Ambush, 26Seconds, I wasnt following a particular skier, and therewere more people in the series that I could have expandedtemporally but that I didnt, but they just stay asbackground.

JW: I wanted to end with a two-line poem by the poet A.R.Ammons and it goes like this: He says, The reeds give way

to the wind and give the wind away. And I was wonderingwhat you thought your photos give way to, but also whatthey give away.

CLJ: I hope they give way to what you were calling loafing,the slowing down, the finding a way to connect that workthat I want people to do in the show. And what they get fromthat, which is what Im giving away, is, well, some peoplecould say nothing, but hopefully people its nature and its,more and more this precious commodity in nature. I rarelyconnect with these kinds of natural environments when Imin the city. And even when I am in the city if I go to one of theparks, I dont necessarily have the appreciation that I have

for the place in the way I do when I see it in this way becauseits presented within this context of these very powerful,beautiful natural landscapes.

JW: I think that translates. You come in here and you leavedifferently. That causes you to be different in the environ-ments that we walk in. Its a nice reminder, different ways ofnavigating.

CLJ: Nice, thank you.

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Digital videoEdition 1 of 37:262012

LandscapeStudies

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Digital videoEdition 1 of 38:492012

Untitled (Sisga, Colombia)

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Credits

Joe North,Catalogue text editor

Cristobal Oltra,Designer

Michelle Hinebrook,Gallery Director

Lisa Lee, Jessica Posner, Maya Weinstein, Apon Palanuwech,Studio Assistants

The production of this exhibition and catalogue were in part funded by ParsonsThe New School for Design's School of Design Strategies, The New School Provost's

Office Student Assistance Fund, and Pratt Institute of Art's GradComD program.

For Hana and Nina who, with difficulty, will hopefully still be able to find the timeto slow down and be in a world beyond screens.

2012

Slow Landscapes: an exhibition catalogue

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