This year, Argentan, France, home of two great 20th century artists, Fernand Léger and André Mare, will be hosting three Slow Art Day events on April 5, 2025.
Citywide events have been an increasingly important part of Slow Art Day.
Small towns like Bloomington, Illinois, and larger cities like Antwerp, Belgium and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania have been hosting multi-venue Slow Art Day celebrations.
We are glad to welcome this Norman town to our movement focused on helping people learn how to slow down, look at, and love art.
On April 13th, Simone Raskin, art consultant and trainer at the Gallery L’Art de Regarder, organized the first official Slow Art Day in Bordeaux, sponsored by the Mairie de Bordeaux (the Bordeaux Town Hall) and hosted at the Espace Saint Rémi.
The Espace Saint Rémi was a church before the French Revolution and has over the centuries transformed into what is now a cultural center for exhibitions. Since 1991, the space has hosted a yearly photography exhibition titled Itinéraires des Photographes Voyageurs, which was created and organized by Nathalie Lamire-Fabre and Vincent Bengold as part of the first Mois de la Photo de Bordeaux (month of photography in Bordeaux).
The slow looking focused on the following 6 works from the photography exhibition:
Patrick Cockpit, “Pasaran, une dystopie franquiste”
Lise Dua, “Les loyautés & Une vie”
Charlotte Auricombe, “Cau Del Llop”
Benoît Capponi, “Toutes les heures blessent”
Sladjana Stankovic, “La Douce“
Thierry Girard, “The Tenjin Omuta Line”
Photo credit: Simone Raskin
The Slow Art Day event was not promoted separately, so Simone greeted the 250+ visitors with an explanation of slow looking, and invited participants to sit in chairs that were arranged in front of the works. She provided them with the following prompts to guide their experience:
What’s going on in this picture?
What is it that attracts you in this particular photography?
What is the mood of the photo?
What are the colors? What do they evoke to you?
What is the composition of this photo?
If you were to say one word about this photo, what would it be?
Does it remind you of a painting, a souvenir, a memory, a personal experience?
Below are some of the works in the event:
“Pasaran, une dystopie franquiste” by Patrick Cockpit
“Les loyautés & Une vie” by Lise Dua
“Cau Del Llop” by Charlotte Auricombe
“La Douce“by Sladjana Stankovic
“The Tenjin Omuta Line” by Thierry Girard
Simone reported that many of the participants thanked her for the event, and they were quite appreciative for the prompts that she provided. Several mentioned that they would try slow looking at future museum visits.
At Slow Art Day HQ we are so glad to hear that the event was so well-received and look forward to whatever Simone Raskin, Mairie de Bordeaux, or Espace Saint Rémi plan for Slow Art Day 2025!
For their first Slow Art Day, Mindful Art hosted two days of mindfulness and slow looking at the Musée des Beaux Arts d’Orléans in Orléans, France. Organizer Marjan Abadie led the hybrid in-person and online event, which had 129 participants in total.
The Mindful Art Experience is an initiative by the Mindfulness Institute in Brussels, Belgium. Below is a website banner they used to promote the event.
Marjan Abadie leading participants through slow looking. CREDIT: Marjan AbadieSlow Art Day participants. CREDIT: Marjan Abadie
We look forward to what Marjan Abadie comes up with for Slow Art Day 2023.
On April 7th, Simone Raskin, Cultural Pedagog and Slow Looking veteran, designed a slow looking event together with the art gallery Arret sur l’Image in Bordeaux, France. Visitors to the gallery were invited to participate in workshops, slowing down during an hour and a half to observe a photography collection titled “D’ici ça ne paraît pas si loin”.
Visitor at the Arret sur l’Image Gallery for the Slow Art event, 7th April 2023Arret sur L’image Gallery Visitor at the Arret sur l’Image Gallery for the Slow Art event, 7th April 2023
Most visitors to the gallery participated in the workshops. Using the VTS method (Visual Thinking Strategies), but also mindfulness and slow looking, Simone facilitated the event, encouraging the participants to first select two photographs and slowly view them individually. The group then discussed impressions from each photograph, and Simone rounded off the session with some information about the artists and their work.
Simone wrote the following intro to the photography exhibition by the LesAssociés collective (translated and partly edited by Johanna Bokedal):
“The project by the LesAssociés collective uses photography, sound and video. Active for 4 years, from September 2015 to June 2019, the 5 photographers from the collective (Alexandre Dupeyron, Elie Monferier, Olivier Panier Des Touches, Joël Peyrou, Sébastien Sindeu) explored the borders of the Nouvelle Aquitaine region of France. The goal of this project was to ask the question: “What does it mean to be from here?” The project puts into perspective the challenges of a fragmented society faced with increasingly broad horizons – large regions, a European identity, and globalization.”
Simone Raskin
Below are five images from the collection with the name of each photographer underneath.
Alexandre DupeyronSebastien Sindeu. Olivier Panier des TouchesJoel PeyrouElie Monferier
At Slow Art Day HQ we are delighted that Slow Art Day is gaining a foothold in France through Simone’s work. Earlier this year she spoke about slow looking as part of a TED x event in Bordeaux. You can view the video in French below:
We look forward to seeing more work from Simone Raskin and the Arret sur l’Image Gallery next year.
– Johanna, Jessica, Ashley, Robin and Phyl
PS: Slow Art Day was on Saturday, April 2, but the gallery hosted their event on the 7th since the exhibition was not yet open on the 2nd.
