On Slowness

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 present's velocity. As he engages with late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century art, photography, video, film, and literature, Koepnick explores slowness as a critical medium to intensify our temporal and spatial experiences. Slowness helps us register the multiple layers of time, history, and motion that constitute our present. It offers a timely (and untimely) mode of aesthetic perception and representation that emphasizes the openness of the future and undermines any conception of the present as a mere replay of the past. Discussing the photography and art of Janet Cardiff, Olafur Eliasson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Michael Wesely; the films of Peter Weir and Tom Tykwer; the video installations of Douglas Gordon, Willie Doherty, and Bill Viola; and the fiction of Don DeLillo, Koepnick shows how slowness can carve out spaces within processes of acceleration that allow us to reflect on alternate temporalities and durations.

In The Discovery of Slowness, German novelist Sten Nadolny recounts the life of the nineteenth-century British explorer Sir John Franklin (1786-1847). The reader follows Franklin's development from awkward schoolboy and ridiculed teenager to expedition leader, governor of Tasmania, and icon of adventure. Everyone with whom he came into contact sensed that he was a rare man, one who was “out of his time” and who moved to a different, grander beat. That beat eventually led Franklin to sail once more—on his final, fateful voyage—into the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. The Discovery of Slowness is both a riveting account of a remarkable and varied life, and a profound and thought-provoking meditation on time.

"Irresistible. . . . Slowness is an ode to sensuous leisure, to the enjoyment of pleasure rather than just the search for it." — Mirabella Milan Kundera's lightest novel, a divertimento, an opera buffa, Slowness is also the first of this author's fictional works to have been written in French. Disconcerted and enchanted, the reader follows the narrator of Slowness through a midsummer's night in which two tales of seduction, separated by more than two hundred years, interweave and oscillate between the sublime and the comic. Underlying this libertine fantasy is a profound meditation on contemporary life: about the secret bond between slowness and memory, about the connection between our era's desire to forget and the way we have given ourselves over to the demon of speed. And about "dancers" possessed by the passion to be seen, for whom life is merely a perpetual show emptied of every intimacy and every joy.

In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter the erosion of humanistic education.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - OVER 1/2 MILLION COPIES SOLD 30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION WITH NEW PREFACE Across the western world more and more people are slowing down. Slower is better: better work, better productivity, better exercise, better sex, better food. DON'T HURRY, BE HAPPY. Almost everyone complains about the hectic pace of their lives. These days, our culture teaches that faster is better. But in the race to keep up, everything suffers - our work, diet and health, our relationships and sex lives. International bestselling author Carl Honoré uncovers a movement that challenges the cult of speed. In this entertaining and hands-on investigation, he takes us on a tour of the emerging Slow movement: from a Tantric sex workshop in London to a meditation room for Tokyo executives, from a SuperSlow exercise studio in New York, to Italy, the home of the Slow Food, Slow Cities and Slow Sex movements. There has never been a better time to embrace the healing power of living slow.

Chasing Slow models HGTV star Erin Loechner's journey to help you break out of the faster-better-stronger trap and make small changes to refresh your perspective, renew your priorities, and shift your focus to what matters most. You're here, but you want to be there. So you spend your life narrowing this divide, and you call this your race, your journey, your path. You live your days tightening your boot straps, wiping the sweat from your brow, chasing undiscovered happiness just around the bend. And on and on you run. Viral sensation and HGTV.com star Erin Loechner knows about the chase. Before turning 30, she'd earned the title "The Nicest Girl Online" as she was praised for her authentic voice and effortless style. Her HGTV web show garnered over one million fans worldwide, and her client list includes Walt Disney World, IKEA, Martha Stewart and Home Depot. The New York Times applauded her, her friends and church admired her, and her husband and baby adored her. She had arrived at the ultimate destination. So why did she feel so lost? Through a series of steep climbs--her husband's brain tumor, bankruptcy, family loss, and public criticism--Erin learns just how much strength it takes to surrender it all, and to veer right into grace. In Chasing Slow, Erin upgrades her life through downsizing--her stuff, her obligations, her fears, her personal metric of "perfect." And ultimately, her invitation becomes yours: to turn away from the fast and frenzy, and find freedom in a new-fashioned lifestyle defined by grace. Life's answers are not always hidden where they seem. It's time to venture off the beaten path to see that we’ve already been given everything we need. We've already arrived. You see? You'll see.

In the tradition of his internationally bestselling In Praise of Slow, and drawing on examples from the most progressive and successful leaders in business, politics, science and society, Carl Honoré brilliantly illuminates why the best way to face our problems might just be to take our time. If the high-flying fighter pilots of the RAF can own up to their mistakes, why can't the rest of us? Toyota was fantastically good at exposing its failings and correcting them, until it stopped, setting the company up for one of the most spectacular falls from grace in the history of the auto industry. BP couldn't bring itself to apologize for its catastrophic oil spill until the entire Gulf Coast of the United States was bearing the brunt of its technological shortcomings. Addicted as we might be to the quick fix--pills, crash diets or just diverting attention from things about to go wrong--the quick fix never really works. Trying to solve problems in a hurry, sticking on a plaster when surgery is needed, might deliver temporary relief, but only at the price of storing up worse trouble for later. For those looking for a fix that sticks, The Slow Fix will help us produce solutions in life and work that endure.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The guru to the gurus at last shares his knowledge with the rest of us. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman's seminal studies in behavioral psychology, behavioral economics, and happiness studies have influenced numerous other authors, including Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman at last offers his own, first book for the general public. It is a lucid and enlightening summary of his life's work. It will change the way you think about thinking. Two systems drive the way we think and make choices, Kahneman explains: System One is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System Two is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Examining how both systems function within the mind, Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities as well as the biases of fast thinking and the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and our choices. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, he shows where we can trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking, contrasting the two-system view of the mind with the standard model of the rational economic agent. Kahneman's singularly influential work has transformed cognitive psychology and launched the new fields of behavioral economics and happiness studies. In this path-breaking book, Kahneman shows how the mind works, and offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and personal lives--and how we can guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble.