Slow Life. Radical Practices of the Everyday

The idea of the exhibition Slow Life. Radical Practices of the Everyday was conceived two years ago and the Ludwig Museum’s curatorial team has been working on the preparation and implementation of the exhibition for months. At the time, we could not have guessed that with the nearly five-month exhibition and program series scheduled for April 2020, we would be dealing with topics that would become imminently close and pressing as a result of the global Covid-19 epidemic caused by the coronavirus. ‘Slow-life’ has all of a sudden become an everyday reality, a forced way of life in the global world.

As we put it in the introduction to the exhibition, “The slow approach represents a need to rethink existing structures and reorganize established practices in the fields of society, economy and everyday life alike. Its essence can be best expressed by consciousness and a critical attitude, from ethical consumption and voluntary simplicity to the concept of a no-growth economy”.

The exhibition Slow Life. Radical Practices of the Everyday was conceived by the curatorial team of the Ludwig Museum Budapest. The current situation also had an impact on the preparation and realization of the exhibition, that it could initially only take place digitally in Budapest. Due to the changes of the program in Budapest the exhibition is at the Ludwig Museum in Koblenz and will be shown in Budapest in July 2021. In a special way, aspects of sustainability, the distribution of resources and “slow life” also come together in this partnership between the two befriended Ludwig Museums.