Slowness in the post-digital age: Sketchbook as archive and curated space

When the sketchbook serves as a means to explore the human inner self and to visualize the sensations that are difficult to articulate verbally, how can it reflect the influence of the post-digital age on everyday life? How can the sketchbook transcend its role as a mere collection of visual images to become a sensory archive, a curated space and an assemblage system connecting the physical world with the imagined realm? Drawing on two case studies – the sketchbooks Untitled in Winter 2021 and Untitled 2023 – this paper responds to these questions. By illustrating how sketchbooks can be considered an archive of artists’ sensations, the paper emphasizes the characteristics of slowness embedded in the sequencing of sketchbooks, as well as their making and viewing processes for both artists and viewers. When these pages of sketches are gathered and considered as a whole, the sketchbook appears to be a curated personal space for artists. Yet, it is a special type of spontaneous curation, guided by artists’ bodily experience and recognized retrospectively. By suggesting both sketchbooks and post-digital internet are assemblage systems, this paper proposes that the slowness and sensual qualities of sketchbooks provide a means of critiquing the post-digital age, which prioritizes efficiency.