Nearly all the films in the series were produced upon invitation by a local festival or organization. And yet, despite its commissioned nature, the project does not feel influenced or compromised, and any discernible changes from film to film have less to do with the requirements of a respective instalment\u2019s sponsor than with Tsai\u2019s evolving interests and goals. We frequently find the walker in unassuming side streets, underpasses, and bus stops. These are not places you\u2019d expect a film festival or tourism board to ask a renowned filmmaker to showcase if its desire was to increase visibility and visitor numbers. The films do, however, promote their own kind of tourism, removed from, if not in stark opposition to, the rhythms of contemporary life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In What Time Is It There? <\/em>(2001), Tsai cast Lee as a young street vendor determined to turn every clock in Taipei back seven hours to match the time in Paris. Now, Lee\u2019s very presence in the Walker films can seemingly bring time to a total halt. Indeed, temporality has been at the centre of Tsai\u2019s filmmaking practice for decades. With films such as Goodbye, Dragon Inn<\/em> (2003) and Stray Dogs<\/em> (2013), he is among the leading figures in the Slow Cinema movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tsai himself is a Buddhist, and his commitment to slowness is more than just an aesthetic preference. He has criticized governments for their lack of sustainable policies and acknowledged that within his own industry a form of degrowth is also called for, saying \u201cI think everything should be stopped.\u201d^{1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 1 <\/a> - Tsai Ming-liang quoted in Nick Pinkerton, Goodbye, Dragon Inn<\/em> (Melbourne: Fireflies Press, 2021), 191.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nHe has carried on making films, however, and travel is at the heart of the Walker series, but in a way that pushes back against the scale at which we experience tourism. There is no doubt that we need to rethink global tourism given the vast acceleration of the environmental crisis. Last year The Guardian<\/em> reported that international tourism doubled in the twenty years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic and that tourist transport alone accounts for 5 percent of global carbon emissions.^{2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 2 <\/a> - Zoe Williams, \u201cWish You Weren\u2019t Here! How Tourists Are Ruining the World\u2019s Greatest Destinations,\u201d The Guardian<\/em>, August 17, 2023, accessible online.<\/span> Further, the average consumer\u2019s experience of a place\u200a\u2014\u200aits culture, landscape, and history\u200a\u2014\u200ais heavily affected by the information overload created by the internet. A policy brief by the United Nations Economist Network (UNEN) describes how, rather than demand for information or an \u201cinformation economy,\u201d demand for attention has risen exponentially, creating an \u201cattention economy,\u201d one whose size \u201cis on the order of trillions of US dollars.\u201d^{3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 3 <\/a> - Chantal Line Carpentier et al., \u201cNew Economics for Sustainable Development: Attention Economy,\u201d United Nations Economist Network (February 2023), 1, -accessible online.<\/span> In this context of governments, corporations, and artists competing for consumers\u2019 attention, Tsai\u2019s filmmaking practice leans further into his engagement with slowness; he pares back production and uses fewer but longer shots to directly rebel against market expectations. Here, we put forward the Walker series as a playful and critical confrontation with tourism art. The films encourage a slower form of sustainable tourism and, more profoundly, as works of slow cinema destined for the museum, they transport the viewer into a different temporality altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Tsai-Ming-liang_Walker\"$
Tsai Ming-liang<\/strong>
Walker<\/em>, video still, 2012.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Film scholar Tiago de Luca argues that Tsai\u2019s films, by virtue of their aesthetic of slowness, must be screened in traditional theatres in order \u201cfor their spectatorial contract to be fully met.\u201d ^{4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 4 <\/a> - Tiago de Luca, \u201cSlow Time, Visible Cinema: Duration, Experience, and Spectatorship,\u201d Cinema Journal<\/em> 56, no. 1 (Fall 2016): 23.<\/span> Nevertheless, in 2013, Tsai announced that he would leave the cinema space behind and shift toward making short films to be screened in museums. For the most part, he has kept his word, with the exception of his recent feature Days <\/em>(2020), with which he briefly returned to theatres. De Luca questions the presentation of slow cinema in galleries, since these \u201ccontexts privilege a peripatetic, individual, and distracted viewing mode in contrast with the collective immobility of theatrical settings.\u201d^{5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 5 <\/a> - De Luca, \u201cSlow Time, Visible Cinema,\u201d 36.<\/span> But perhaps Tsai is trying to forge a new spectatorial contract with the viewer by placing these films in gallery spaces\u200a\u2014\u200aone that involves choosing a different rhythm, even if it means stopping entirely and sitting with a work long enough to compromise the rest of one\u2019s visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Tsai$
Tsai Ming-liang<\/strong>
Walker<\/em>, video still, 2012.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Most recently, the museum has taken on a new significance for the Walker series as both a screening environment and a subject. In 2022, the Centre Pompidou presented a retrospective of Tsai\u2019s film practice since 1989, including O\u00f9 en \u00eates-vous, Tsai Ming-liang? <\/em>(2022), a special commission by the institution, and the premiere of the ninth film in his series, Where <\/em>(2022), which was shot in and around the museum on the occasion of this invitation. An original exhibition, titled Une qu\u00eate<\/em> [A Quest] (November 25, 2022\u200a\u2014\u200aJanuary 2, 2023), accompanied the retrospective; curator and film programmer Am\u00e9lie Galli described it as a poetic eulogy for materiality and slowness expressed through image, sound, water, and paper. In his masterclass at the Centre Pompidou, Tsai recounted an interaction that he had with a retired couple who had just finished watching the first film in the series, No Form<\/em>. He was touched to hear them say that they thought it was a film that needed to be watched in its entirety, but it left him wondering how many people can afford to spend so much time in a museum.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
It is true that Tsai\u2019s temporality is challenging. Journey to the West<\/em> (2014), the sixth instalment in the Walker series, opens with an unbroken eight-minute shot of French actor Denis Lavant, who plays one of the few supporting roles in the series. His rugged face is framed so tightly that we can see every hair and pore. For the entirety of the shot, Lavant, lying on his side, does little more than breathe. Regardless of the venue, a scene like this almost invites spectators\u2019 minds to wander. One might begin to silently suspect technical difficulties. Perhaps the projector is broken or the video playback paused. There are barely enough cues to indicate the passing of time: the pulse on Lavant\u2019s neck, the distant sounds of the seaside and the bustling city of Marseille. Similarly, in Sand<\/em> (2018), the eighth Walker film, we find Lee in a deep sewer-like tunnel that appears to open onto the sea. From this angle, with the camera pointed directly down the centre of the tunnel and Lee at the other end, it is impossible to discern the details of his body or whether or not he is moving. As in the shot of Lavant in Journey to the West<\/em>, diegetic sound provides the only sure sign that it is not the film running slower than usual but the actions of the performer. The dissonance between the pace of Lee\u2019s movements and that of his environment requires an adjustment period afforded by the first long takes typical of a Walker film. This adjustment to slow time\u200a\u2014\u200ato Tsai\u2019s time\u200a\u2014\u200arequires effort, but it is a worthwhile experiment during which viewers may begin to privilege other senses and re-evaluate their own experience of life within and without the museum walls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Tsai-Ming-liang_TheDunes\"$ <\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Tsai-Ming-liang_TheDunes\"$ <\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Tsai-Ming-liang_TheDunes\"$
Tsai Ming-liang<\/strong>
Sand<\/em>, video stills, 2018.
Photos: Claude Wang<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The Walker series exists in large part because of the invitations that Tsai has received from Marseille International Film Festival, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and the Centre Pompidou, among other organizations. Although this may seem like a determining factor in how the films in the series are made and what aspects of a city or landscape they feature, they surprise us time after time, highlighting Lee\u2019s endurance as a performer as well as locations off the beaten path. Sand<\/em> is a perfect example of this. Rather than a festival or museum commission,itwas created upon invitation by the Northeast and Yilan Coast National Scenic Area Headquarters, which is part of the Taiwanese Tourism Administration. The film is set on the coastal beaches of Taiwan, in an eel-fishing settlement against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean. Strangely, the solitary figure of the monk does not encounter a single other person for the duration of this instalment, but that doesn\u2019t diminish the vital role of personal connection in the film. Sand<\/em> was made to be presented inside the Zhuangwei Dune Visitor Center, where one might expect to find posters and videos of smiling families under sunny skies enjoying all that the area has to offer. Instead, Tsai\u2019s monk is projected on a wall, walking against a stark grey sky that matches the dark sand below his feet. The winds are strong and the landscape appears harsh and uninhabitable. The film is a kind of homecoming for Tsai, who was born in Malaysia but has lived in Taiwan since the age of twenty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With all his moving around, Tsai says he doesn\u2019t know if he belongs to any place. This ambiguous sense of belonging parallels what author Rebecca Solnit describes as part of the condition of walking alone: \u201cA solitary walker is in the world, but apart from it, with the detachment of the traveler rather than the ties of the worker, the dweller, the member of a group.\u201d^{6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 6 <\/a> - Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking<\/em> (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 21.<\/span> When he began the project, Tsai was inspired by the historic journey of Xuanzang (Hs\u00fcan-tsang), a seventh-century Chinese Buddhist monk who walked from China to India. It is true that solitude and longing are throughlines in Tsai\u2019s films, and the Walker series is no exception, if we consider that he feels he is a foreigner in the cities in which he films (even his hometowns of Taiwan, for Sand<\/em>, and Kuching, Malaysia, where he created his fifth instalment, Walking on Water<\/em> in 2013). The films follow a solitary traveller and are simultaneously shot through the lens\u200a\u2014\u200aand the gaze\u200a\u2014\u200aof a tourist.^{7<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 7 <\/a> - \u201cJourney to the West<\/em> was mostly shot in Marseille. While I was there, I also taught a lecture, and a student asked me, \u2018What do you know about the city? What are you going to film?\u2019 I told them I\u2019m very unfamiliar with the city, almost like I\u2019m a tourist here, because I was invited to film the city.\u201d See seijinlee<\/em>, \u201cTsai Ming Liang and Lee Kang Sheng discuss the Walker<\/em> Series in Evanston 2 of 2,\u201d YouTube video, 16:36, October 1, 2022, accessible online.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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We can therefore think of walking, and the entire Walker series, as an attempt to rectify feelings of isolation or loneliness that pervade modern life, through connecting with the self, Earth, and others. In this way, the series is ultimately a lesson in slowing down, particularly with regard to travel, and reconsidering how travelling more sustainably and appreciating the overlooked details of our everyday surroundings is restorative personally and environmentally.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Tsai-Ming-liang_Where\"$
Tsai Ming-liang<\/strong>
Where<\/em>, video still, 2022.
Photo: Claude Wang<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Further, the films literally slow us down as consumers of art, encouraging reflection on how we encounter and understand images. Walking and travel are their subject, but also part of the experience of viewing the works in non–theatrical spaces. Solnit writes that \u201ca certain kind of wanderlust can only be assuaged by the acts of the body itself in motion, not the motion of the car, boat, or plane. It is the movement as well as the sights going by that seems to make things happen in the mind, and this is what makes walking ambiguous and endlessly fertile: it is both means and end, travel and destination.\u201d ^{8<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 8 <\/a> - Solnit, Wanderlust<\/em>, 6.<\/span> Discovering a Walker film in a museum or gallery, as one mills about or slowly walks past, is in fact the ideal encounter, not only for experiencing the film but also for entering the physicality of the main character, thus connecting with him and all those who cross his path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Where<\/em> comes to a close, the familiar voice of Chinese singer Yao Lee (a signature of Tsai\u2019s films) plays the monk off as he walks away from the Centre Pompidou along the pedestrian street Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, his back to us in a sea of bobbing heads. The passersby who stare, comment, imitate, snap photos of, or even stop to watch Lee are interrupted in a genuine moment of curiosity. Somehow, the strangers who pause to watch suddenly appear more in focus. They are broken out of their time-space through this chance encounter and, by virtue of the presence of the actor and film crew, they enter Tsai\u2019s slow time. This is crystallized by the four-minute shot in his second film, Walker <\/em>(2012), in which a crowd of people gradually grows and flanks Lee on either side of a bustling intersection in Hong Kong\u2019s Mong Kok district. They are a mix of locals and tourists, each of them with somewhere to be. Despite this, the walker, centre stage, appears to have parted the seas and slowed down time, propelling himself toward us with strength and grace amid the chaos. In the museum, we are presented with the opportunity to stop, look, and become part of the crowd of on-screen passersby. These moments of connection, however brief, remind us of our humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A media archivist by training, Adam Abouaccar has worked at various Montr\u00e9al film and arts institutions. From 2017 to 2022, Adam was the film segment director at the POP Montr\u00e9al. He is currently the Technical Specialist, Conservation at the NFB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Born and raised in Montr\u00e9al, Amelia Wong-Mersereau is the Coordinator of Print Projects and Digital Content at the PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art. In 2021, she was awarded the Winter Editorial Mentorship at Canadian Art<\/em>. She has been a member of the editorial board at Esse arts + opinions<\/em> since 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n
Adam Abouaccar, Amelia Wong-Mersereau, Tsai Ming-Liang<\/div>\n
Adam Abouaccar, Amelia Wong-Mersereau, Tsai Ming-Liang<\/div>
Adam Abouaccar, Amelia Wong-Mersereau, Tsai Ming-Liang<\/div>
Adam Abouaccar, Amelia Wong-Mersereau, Tsai Ming-Liang<\/div>
Adam Abouaccar, Amelia Wong-Mersereau, Tsai Ming-Liang<\/div>
Adam Abouaccar, Amelia Wong-Mersereau, Tsai Ming-liang<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the last twelve years, Taiwan-based director Tsai Ming-liang\u2019s \u201cwalker\u201d character has been travelling the world on foot. Each of the nine films in the ongoing series shares a single premise: an unnamed monk in striking red robes, played by Tsai\u2019s long-time muse Lee Kang-sheng, walks very slowly from one place to another. Always moving forward, rarely, if ever, interrupted, he has traversed Taipei, Hong Kong, Marseille, Tokyo, and, most recently, Paris. The films in the Walker<\/em> series have gradually lengthened in duration. No Form,<\/em> the first of four Walker<\/em> films released in 2012, clocks in at twenty minutes, whereas the tenth and latest instalment, Abiding Nowhere<\/em> (2024), is feature-length at seventy-nine. Lee\u2019s journey through these cities is presented in a deceptively simple and minimalist style. Mounted on a tripod, the camera is static. It\u2019s our eyes that track his movement across the frame. The muscles in his body gently tense, hold, and release as he moves at this slower-than-slow-motion pace.<\/br>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":250641,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,882],"tags":[],"numeros":[6937],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[982,1055],"artistes":[4157],"thematiques":[],"type_post":[319],"class_list":{"0":"post-250651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-post","9":"numeros-111-tourism","10":"auteurs-adam-abouaccar-en","11":"auteurs-amelia-wong-mersereau-en","12":"artistes-tsai-ming-liang-en","13":"type_post-principal"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270817,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250651\/revisions\/270817"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250651"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=250651"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=250651"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=250651"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=250651"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=250651"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=250651"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=250651"},{"taxonomy":"type_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_post?post=250651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}