All Aboard! The Sleigh Ride (2015)

 

Ephemeral Waves

The origins to The Sleigh Ride and what is called "slow television" is Norway. You can move back further into cinema itself and avant-garde cinema, in mind to Andy Warhol's many extra long moving paintings (Empire (1964) an eight hour film about the Empire State Building, Sleep (1964) which is five plus hours of John Giorno sleeping). Warhol's work in these films was never meant to be binged, to be interacted with whether in cinema and installation alongside with other members of the audience. Slow television can go further back as the recordings of burning Yule log fires broadcasted on television and Night Walk (1986-1993), a Canadian television series where walks across night-time Canadian cities were scored to jazz. The Norwegian trend for slow television, extended programming, became popular in the country, such as experiencing a train ride in real time in Bergensbanen minutt for minutt (2009), a seven plus hour television special from NRK (Norwegian Norsk rikskringkasting AS), Norway's public service broadcaster. A detailed look at the real-time footage from the seven-hour train journey from Bergen to Oslo in Norway, Bergensbanen... is one of many titles which became popular in the country's television, with extensive day long specials that deliberately pull away from the flash and saturation of modern technology.

It's importing to other countries as a trend, as All Aboard! The Sleigh Ride was part of a series of BBC 4 programmes for a season called BBC Four Goes Slow from 2015-16, does raise questions. Slow cinema has become a huge part of art cinema, and is what interested me in slow television, in how Béla Tarr with the seven hour plus Sátántangó (1994), let alone avant-garde cinema, pushes the boundaries of slowing images down and forcing one to contemplate reality. With slow television outside of Norway, you have something that was clearly a cultural trend where people wished to turn television into a form of concentration and slowing down from the bustle of modern life, which became a fad for other countries even if programmes were still being made by the end of the 2010s. There is the cynical nature of this concept being a scapegoat to try to overcome the existential issues of the 21st century. The "hygge" trend, from the Danish and Norwegian cultural habit of living as cosily as possible and rejecting modernism in many ways, became a quickly popular trend in my country of Britain, and it felt more like a quick help concept than a way to question how modern Western civilisation and how it works. The contrast to slow cinema - able to be derivative too but at its best some of the most profound cinema as possible - can be found in many slow television works are meant to be contemplative experiences of train rides, of watching people knit for twelve hours (NRK's Nasjonal strikkekveld special (2013)), but the concept in itself as an alternative to slow cinema, a cleansing visual stimulus that slows you down, is a concept to appreciate and consider with an artistic curiosity. The BBC4 special raises a fascinating idea of contrasting slow cinema and slow television by including a theatrical documentary by Frederick Wiseman, the legendary documentarian who began as far back as the 1960s, with National Gallery (2014), one of the few films of his easily available to see in Britain about the London art gallery, a theatrical screened film among the likes of The Sleigh Ride during the specials.

I liked The Sleigh Ride, but considering I came in for the extreme pace of experimental cinema, it is a contemplative and cosy work instead, a two-hour real-time reindeer sleigh ride with Sami people filmed in Karasjok, Norway. In mind to The White Reindeer (1952), a Finnish folktale film set among the culture of the Sami people that I adore, to see the actual Sami culture onscreen was fascinating. The Sleigh Ride whilst playing to being a long and extensive trip across Karasjok snow covered land, is as much a document to their culture with CGI layered text bubbles and monochrome inserts of old culture. I see this not as a dismissal, but this does leave this closer to a film you see at a museum or cultural institution that just happened to be nearly two hours long, those that you could see with an exhibition of Sami cultural items and clothes behind glass. That in itself does raise a fascinating note of what the moving picture medium, as likewise covering this for an amateur review forces one to rethink what the medium is. I am someone who finds - be it television, film, in-between - the moving picture medium is all from the same source, but that they are distinct in how they altered and changed to serve the notion of depiction the moving recorded images. In this case, I imagine The Sleigh Ride having been actually a hybrid of two different formats, the museum installation and the television work, if by pure accident, if in consideration that even for a television special this would have been fascinating to see in context of a museum setting with a much large screen and the ability for a viewer to wander in and out of the room at certain times. It really does not feel like slow television in the definition I presumed it to be, and if you want to be absurd, a purist would decry the additional aesthetics aspects as completely compromising the point of slowing down a viewer and forcing them to contemplate the passing of time with distractions.

Together though, if you can appreciate this, it is fascinating. The long sleigh ride, with one woman of the Sami culture and her reindeer, is peaceful. Time passes and sunlight turns closer to dusk, though as is established in a text caption, daylight is sometimes sparse at certain times of the year, making this wilderness environment completely remote. The presence of actual human beings here, including the pleasing sight of a man happily participating in the Sami activity of ice fishing, does vastly contrast this timeless environment which this culture still wishes to be of rather than the modern day of the 2010s. Were it not for the compromises/cultural information that provide content, this would be a slow but peaceful experience, and it was at least for me. As a snapshot of the culture, I have no issue with the factual content and appreciated it, even if it turns this less into an artistic statement forcing you to feel another culture, or an event in slow time, but closer to a fond museum/cultural institution presentation which ends with a still contemplation of aurora borealis.

The concept of the slow television medium in itself does not really differ from slow cinema except that, with the longer time available, you can stretch the length of a work further out, and even that is questionable as, even before digital film cameras allowed one to film with less restrictions in physical reels of recording material, directors like Andy Warhol found a way to make lengthy experimental projects. Aside from this however, there really is no difference. Installation art, slow television and experimental films which do push the mainstream trends of actual length and content are not different for me beyond how they are presented and how the audience interacts with them. The later is the more important, returning to what Andy Warhol's work talked of. The Sleigh Ride was enjoyable to experience, but I can however see a work, even if more of an endurance to experience, a Christmas presentation, was clearly meant to be one viewed with an audience who interacted or, if viewed by oneself, a peaceful balm to the chaotic nature of that time of the year or an off-switch to a lot of environmental hecticness in the modern day. This is fascinating to review as, unfortunately, this does raise a great concern of how the moving image reflects the anxieties of their creators and the audience, especially that this reflects a need to find a way to step away from a heavily sensitised and technology heavy world, and if you are a cynic, attempts at band aids in this world rather than address the problem's roots. That can leave a more profound influence on a viewer like me used to this endurance as much as for another viewer. Even on a less serious note, I am the kind of mad man intrigued in watching the entirety of Bergensbanen minutt for minutt, even if split up into pieces, and if anything The Sleigh Ride was a nice taster of a greater field of note. Entirely because, wishing to see the form of moving images in its various forms, these curious tangents in them, and not always written about, they are experiences to appreciate and consider in what their origins and differences are.