Walking in the River

In early August, while my brain orbited slowness, I worked with a friend on a film project based on a river that runs through her hometown. Early each morning, after sleepily sharing a coffee, we trekked by bike, then foot, to climb down off the road to the river’s edge. To reach our filming location, a cove nestled on an islet, we traversed and hobbled our way through the knee-high current across mud and algae-hugged stones.

Transporting ourselves with gear on our backs, I couldn’t help but notice how the form of our walking was so changed by our path through the water. To keep upright, we hobbled, crouched, reached with careful hands, lifted our arms like wings, paused and looked, and swayed as if walking for the first time. We focused carefully on each placement of our hands and feet, as well as where we were looking. A distance that would take one minute to walk or bike on a road took us almost ten minutes each way.

Should I Walk or Take the Car?

In ordinary life, slowness is frequently framed in negative terms. Much of what poses slowness as undesirable stems from cultural pressures shaped by contemporary work culture. From prioritizing productivity within a linear temporality to colloquial associations of slowness with incompetence, or even unintelligence, the notorious writings off of slowness as a habit of wastefulness are readily accessible.

Scientists and artists, equally exposed to this messaging, also take on unique societal expectations and prescriptions for pacing. A publish-or-perish culture in academia places enormous pressure on researchers to rush studies, misconstrue data, and choose topics likely to attract attention over ones they feel are important.

For artists, slowness and mindful work, which appear as stretches of gathering inspiration that may not look like “working,” but are known as incubation, are more readily embraced as part of the creative process. Sometimes, the amount of time put into an artwork is proportional to its perceived value, and it is not uncommon for artists to speak of projects they have worked on for decades, or even their whole lives.

Works of both artists and scientists nonetheless typically involve a sustained period of arduous focus, trial and error, and perhaps a bit of mad seclusion or fixation. Picture a painter patiently bringing to life the precious detail of a work or an ecologist collecting field data that requires attentive states or seasons of waiting periods.

In both fields, the pace of work is rarely as swift or efficient as cultural narratives might suggest. Instead, it is the very endurance of slowness that allows art and science to develop into works of depth, integrity, and lasting significance.

The Slow Movement

While framings of slowness as a weakness are common, many teachings and movements call for an opposed way of being. The Slow Movement¹—including concepts like “slow living”—originated in Italy during the 1980s. It emerged from a food-based protest (Slow Food), begun in 1986 to oppose the infiltration of fast food into Italian culinary culture, and gradually evolved into a broader critique of capitalist pressures on health, culture, and ecosystems. Ripple effects generated many sub-movements, including “slow art” and “slow science”. Both advocate for quality over quantity, addressing problems at their root, and deepening human attunement to experience. These effects of slowness, supported by the movement, perhaps offer a window into how artistic and scientific practices might more readily be granted the permission to unfold at a slower, more deliberate pace.

When Straddling Rocks

For those who pursue both art and science professionally, art-scientists, the challenge of slowness takes on a unique shape. Straddling two worlds with different norms of speed can feel like balancing on separate rocks, each governed by its own time. Just as they learn to shift between the rhythms of these disciplines, navigating this tangle of cultural messaging about slowness may require recognizing exactly when and where patience is needed. Perhaps, in this tango between worlds, there are lessons about how to be slow—and why it matters—that come from beyond the human experience itself.

In-Between Shells

In her memoir The Body is a Doorway², author Sophie Strand skillfully wields her passion for ecology and storytelling to rewrite narratives in her life and experience with chronic illness. She describes the phenomenon of “vacancy chains” that hermit crabs may enact when they outgrow their shell. A hermit crab leaving its shell may wait beside one that’s too big for up to eight hours. When others arrive, sometimes twenty or more, they all swap shells at once, each finding the perfect fit.

Strand reflects on what it must feel like to be that first hermit crab. In between shells, alone, and having faith that others will even come. Like hermit crabs who periodically outgrow their encasings, the trajectory of an art-science career can include many moments of resting between fields or without clear frameworks—a path often as blurry and twisting as navigating stones in rushing water. By embracing slowness and leaning on a supportive art-science movement, these in-between moments can become opportunities for deeper reflection, growth, and interdisciplinary connection.

Each morning with my friend, I was struck by the reality that, surely, if we did not walk slowly on our way to the film site, we could have been injured or have dropped our equipment along the way. Rushing the in-between moments, when we were not exactly working, but immersing ourselves in the place and the liveness of the river, a tragic accident would’ve forced us to postpone the project altogether.

Sometimes, slowness is a superpower.

A superpower for seeing, hearing, and encountering the little noticed. It is a skill of making room for meaning, allowing the unexpected to seep in, and creating space for memories and ideas to build up. In this way, time isn’t spent or taken, it is gifted and grown.

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1. Wikipedia contributors. (2025, August 15). Slow movement (culture). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:51, August 16, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slow_movement_(culture)&oldid=1306003691 ↩︎
2. Strand, S. (2025). Living Between Stories: Hermit Crabs and Cocoons. In The Body is a Doorway: A Memoir: A Journey Beyond Healing, Hope, and the Human. Running Press Adult.  ↩︎