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.
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