Variations of slowness

Abstract

This work is a reflection on an articulative element of tempo: slowness, understood not as an absolute and stable semiotic entity, but rather as a relative value that responds to various régimes of time and space. The valuation made of slowness changes constantly regarding the subject that conveys it or detects it in another, in such a way that the value of slowness assigned by one subject to another may be considered as a sufficiency or an insufficiency. Slowness as sufficiency, upon intensifying space and time, favors the opening of memory, the experience retained from an event and the absorption of knowledge. On the other hand, slowness as insufficiency is presented when a subject responds belatedly to an abrupt interruption of the events or when there is a rupture in the line of the expected. Therefore, the cardinal interest of this article is centered on the existential relativity that is instated in the different forms of living, enduring or constituting slowness. The four texts that are analyzed in this work account for the different semiotic valuations that are being forged from slowness.