This project aims to translate the slow cinema film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles into book form. Through this experimental translation, the project explores how a shift in medium can affect different aspects of communication, including style, audience, context, value and knowledge.
By breaking the film’s original linear narrative structure, I chose to place its climax — the murder — at the beginning of the book, using a reversed narrative as the starting point of the story. This approach shifts the audience’s attention from “what happens” to “why it happens”, guiding readers to explore the character’s psychological changes and emotional accumulation within the framework of slow cinema. This narrative structure also responds more closely to contemporary readers’ preference for non-linear and puzzle-like forms of storytelling.
The project also incorporates principles of slow design, emphasising a considered design process and the sensory qualities of materials. Through this experimental translation, the work reinterprets and extends the film’s central themes, while also using design as a way to question and redefine the boundaries between different media.
Designer: Yumeng Tian
Year: 12/2024
Venue: Glasgow, UK