The Artists’ Long Take as Passage in Sharon Lockhart’s Installation Lunch Break (2008)

Abstract

Reflecting upon the differences of contemporary artists’ long takes made for galleries, we find that a key assumption about cinematic long takes no longer persists: the time of the long take and the viewer’s time may not coincide. That being the case, the singular framing of space cannot possibly have the same effects as have either the cinematic long takes discussed by Bazin, the deadened time employed by Snow, Warhol, and 1970s artists performing on video, or the more thoughtful duration that has been attributed to slow cinema. Focusing on Sharon Lockhart’s installation Lunch Break, the chapter explores how the gallery’s asynchronicity of time invites viewers to engage with the image on other, intermedial and spatial levels. Hence, rather than a suspension of the passage of time, for Lockhart and other artists their long takes build upon the notion of the spatial passage as a walkway, corridor, or room.