As Catherine, our social media editor, and I walked into a small room in the Joslyn Art Museum, we were immediately met with the hypnotic sounds of a guitar, slow-motion scenes of people walking around the streets of Manhattan, and the commentary of a couple snuggled just one row behind us.
The intimacy of the film was felt not only in the small nature of the room, which only sat 11, but also in the subjects of the film. Shot in slow motion, the raw version of New York City is exposed to the viewer. People who would normally be rushing past are captured for extended periods of time. Blinks seem to last a lifetime and details in a scene that would have been overlooked are made to be the subject of the shot.
Three years ago, artist James Nares spent a week driving through Manhattan in a rented SUV with an ultra-high-speed camera rigged to a platform in the back seat with its lens pointed at the passing sidewalks, according to exhibit information provided by the Joslyn.
During that week Nares recorded more than 16 hours of footage from which he removed 2 minutes and 40 seconds of real-time footage. The artist then slowed down this edited section, creating an hour-long video, which is set to the rhythmic sound of a 12-string guitar. The music was composed by Thurston Moore, the co-founder of Sonic Youth, and its droning sounds add to the slow nature of the piece.
The result of this slowed video footage is a dreamlike state in a public space. On the busy streets of Manhattan, people’s quick movements and gestures transform into fluid choreography. Order is created from the chaos of an urban area.
“[I wanted to convey a] dreamlike impression of floating through a city full of people frozen in time, caught Pompeii-like at a particular moment of thought, expression, or activity,” Nares said of his work while at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in an article published on the museums website.
Nares also said that his inspiration for Street was short, non-fiction films dating back to the 1890s. These films used footage of actual people and places, but were not structured in the traditional narrative storylines. This stimulus is evident in Nares’ work as he focuses more on interpretation than documentation.
Throughout his one-week journey, Nares stated that he was searching for the “right” situations to film. Selecting only a portion of his database of film to showcase, he is not only an observer, but also a presenter of moments that are striking and timeless.
The film is framed as a series of montages rather than a linear narrative, and individuals become the focus rather than the crowd. The use of extreme slow motion allows the audience to absorb all of the rich detail that would have been otherwise lost in fleeting moments.
Catherine and I watched as tourists stared down at their maps, parents embraced their children, friends ate at restaurants and chatted. All of these simple acts become colossal as they gradually unfold.
“You go, kid!” shouts the woman in the couple behind us as a small boy hits a baseball at his Little League game on screen.
The emotion in each shot is evident, and small actions become great triumphs as they develop on the screen.
While the beginning of the film focuses on a busy street of Times Square, the final one follows a solitary man wandering down an empty street, reminding the audience that while we are all part of something larger, focusing on the complexity of the single person is a noble use of time.