Retard: delay or hold back in terms of progress or development. From the French retarder, Latin, retardare from re-‘back’ and tardus-‘slow’.
I was thinking about my new project today, the seascape film, and what it is I am trying to achieve with this work. As with all my practice, there is is an allegiance to the first impression, but in addition, an exploration of non-narrative time. The word retard came to mind and I was struck by this idea of delaying or holding back the tide of progress and development in order to create a qualitatively different space or path.
As part of this, I’ve been practising sitting, doing nothing at all, for 15 minutes a day. The idea is to fully engage with inactivity, to digest and cultivate a sense of, and feeling for, what can be best described as no mans land. What are the qualities of this territory and how are they different to the dimensions of endless consumption, action, movement, opinion, subjectivism and infinite perspectivism we currently impose on the past, present and future? It appears counterintuitive to our current way of thinking but my feeling is that there are great creative forces residing in this space and its about having the skills to recognise them.
So…this is what I’ll be exploring with the seascape film, the open horizon-; no mans land, exemplar par excellence.
Laura van Tatenhove 