a durational project with The Silent Academy; alongside Rebecca Stenfors
21.12.25 - ongoing
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(somewhere between a fridge and a kitchen wall in a suburb of Los Angeles)
50.8 x 50.8 x 4mm
all images courtesy of Ben Carlton Turner
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module 001
One weekend during the summer of 2025 Philip Newcombe was traveling from Germany to the UK. That same weekend Rebecca Stenfors was traveling from Denmark to the UK. They traveled on different airlines and on different days at different times but both sat in the window seat. Nothing spectacular occurred during either flight. You can imagine. There was the noise of the craft. The strange carpet. The decorative elements of procedure. At the precise same moment during their flights, from respective seats they each took a photograph of a wind farm in the coastal waters below. There had been no contrived effort to capture the same image from the same altitude, no choreographed attempt to create a shared experience. It just happened.
Later, Rebecca would share her photograph of the wind farm on an Instagram story. Philip would also do the same.
For a number of years Philip Newcombe and I have been discussing the creation of a guide. We wanted to call the guide ‘How to Walk Slowly’. We envisioned a freedom to meander around thoughts and feelings without concerning ourselves with the pressure of a destination. We wanted a space to open for synchronicity and small signs from the universe that pointed toward larger events that exist without centre and without edge.
For a number of years Rebecca Stenfors and I have been discussing the pursuit of a story. We don’t care for the telling of the story, nor the object of the story - but for a kind of odyssey that has no end, a journey that doesn’t necessarily require a traveller to move. [But it’s nice if they do] We want for the story to resonate with authenticity in itself regardless of the audience - but still it is a story that deserves to exist and touch things. And because the world is sometimes so filled with brutal edges the story should be cloudlike and beyond corruption.
When the two photos of the same wind farm appeared briefly on social media it felt like a good first step in a guide called How to Walk Slowly. An opening chapter in a certain kind of non-linear story. A collaborative work that would touch on the fleeting view.
Throughout the collaboration, to preserve the solitude of a view from a window seat Philip and Rebecca have not spoken to one another. They each followed a private process set in motion by their flights, their photographs, and the thoughts that followed. I have sat in the middle. Listening to stories of process and how decisions were made to respond and convey the quiet sense of awe we experience when sat quietly in the sky feeling our way through thoughts.
How to Walk Slowly, one day will be a book and an exhibition of sorts. At that time work created by contributors will be gathered together and you will be invited to touch them. For now it is a durational exercise - a process with elements we share to invite inclusion. We call those elements ‘study materials’.
Study materials include digital codes. Samples of colours. Details of sound. A little writing. Materials and methods with which we invite audiences to build their own slowly slowly.
Everything offered here is free to download, print, use and/or reference however you may wish.
- Andrew Shaw - on a bench in the rain. 01.12.25
