This book discusses boredom as an aesthetic category that helps to explain a tendency in late 20th c. art to focus on everyday things, avoid definite meaning or create ‘nothing’. The aesthetics of boredom result from a paradoxical situation when aesthetic experiences are created from banality – the very phenomenon that artists try to escape from. Such an attitude of ‘indifferent’ detachment from Soviet reality formed into a strong artistic statement in Lithuanian photography of the 1980s when photographers not only represented the boring existence in the USSR, but also emphasised the banality of environment and emptiness of space through visual monotony. They replaced the ‘decisive moment’ with chance and tried to slow the time of the photograph thus focusing on the value of the eventless present moment.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ▪ 13
THE PHENOMENON OF BOREDOM ▪ 41
THE AESTHETICS OF BOREDOM ▪ 87
How Are the Aesthetics of Boredom Possible? ▪ 88
Strategies of the Aesthetics of Boredom. ▪ 99
IMAGES OF BOREDOM IN LITHUANIAN SOCIAL LANDSCAPE
PHOTOGRAPHY ▪ 125
Boredom as the Subject of Social Landscape Photography ▪ 125
Monotonous Expression ▪ 150
The Banal Object ▪ 176
Topology of the Aesthetics of Boredom: Space ▪ 206
Chance and the Accidental Moment ▪ 251
The Slowing of Time ▪ 274
CONCLUSIONS ▪ 309
APPENDICES
Bibliography ▪ 313
List of Illustrations ▪ 322
Index ▪ 32
