Today is international Slow Art Day, a day to take the time to look slowly at art. Our attention spans are getting shorter as we are bombarded with increasing amounts of stimulation, and as a consequence we spend less quality time being present in any occupation. Slow Art Day aims take us away from that rush of everyday life, to spend time looking at art, slowly.
Thinking about how we look at art brings up the subject of the gallery space, and how it is designed and used. They are often crowded and noisy. There is rarely comfortable seating infront of the works- usually just a hard functional block in the middle of the room. The pieces are generally positioned for a medium height adult whilst they are standing. This design doesn’t invite us to spend long periods of time looking at particular pieces. It invites us to keep moving.
I have recently been introduced to the word ‘ekphrasis’, by someone who saw that I was doing this. Ekphrasis is the act of writing about art, of describing the details of an image. I have been writing about paintings by Bryan Charnley, as I found there were so many details in his incredible paintings that I needed time to submerge myself in them to really understand everything that was going on. Setting time aside to write about them was a way to make myself look at the details, slowly.
Looking at art is an occupation, but it has undefined edges. Many occupations that we consider as OTs are physical acts involving some sort of gross or fine motor movements, which are fairly easy to define. However there are more subtle occupations which are more blurry, such as sleeping and being, and also looking. Looking involves coordination of the eye muscles, and a lot of cognitive skills such as attention, memory and information processing. Looking itself can be seen as one act, but at what point does looking become understanding, interpretation and creating meaning? At what point does looking become seeing?
This is a blog post with many loose strands that I hope to unpick another time. There is a lot to think about with gallery and museum spaces and how they are designed and used for people with and without disabilities. There is also a lot to think about with how ekphrasis can be used to help engage with art for those with and without visual impairment.
Happy Slow Art Day!
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