Annual Slow Motion Walk
At the American Dance Festival n the summer of 1975 , I did a slow motion super market shopping event, and followed up on this in the early fall of 1975 by doing a slow motion walk with three other people in NYC from W. 116th Street to W. 115th Street on the west side of the street. We took an hour to walk the city block. It was an exhilarating meditation with time. We attracted a lot of attention and interest from passersby and onlookers. Subsequently, this became an annual ritual for me. When I moved to Ann Arbor in 1985, I began to do the walk with my students, generally on one of the first warm days of spring when there was a festive atmosphere on the streets. We went from the corner of State Street and North University to the corner of State Street and Liberty, again, taking one hour for the event. The rules were and continue to be to walk in slow motion, not to embellish this activity in any way with other motions or gestures, and not to respond to comments and questions from onlookers, but rather to enter fully into the meditative experience.
I found an entry from a journal of mine from 1975, when the walk began (link below). The entry may have been intended to be a part of a paper for a course, given my crossings out.
We have been filmed and photographed widely by onlookers, especially in the age of the smart phone. The annual walk has also gotten the attention of the Ann Arbor News on two occasions, although it is difficult to capture the experience in a still photo. In 2019, footage of our event was posted by an onlooker on a social media site, Barstoolsports, where it went viral, with close to 1.5 million views and over 1000 comments, ranging from amused to hostile.
Fogel journal entry on slow motion 1975