Description:

The Buffett Institute for Global Affairs hosts colloquia for graduate students to present their research to globally engaged peers. This talk features Comparative Literary Studies PhD candidate Sihan Wang presenting "Walking Against Time: Chan Buddhism and the Politics of Slowness in Tsai Ming-liang’s Walker Series." Q&A and discussion will follow; light refreshments will be served.

Filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang’s Walker series (2012–ongoing) reimagines time through the deliberate, meditative pace of a Tang monk, Xuanzang, moving against the backdrop of fast-paced, globalized urban spaces. Drawing on Buddhist aesthetics, the series invokes an indigenous temporality that resists the accelerated rhythms imposed by capitalist modernity. Sihan argues that Walker's extreme slowness destabilizes the dominant temporal regimes of contemporary life, offering a cinematic space that reclaims a contemplative, embodied relationship to time, nature, and urban landscapes. Tsai’s technique of extreme deceleration, through the Chan Buddhist concept of "the present moment," critiques the regulated, productive time of global capitalism, offering an alternative mode of existence and experience. By foregrounding the body in motion and its interaction with built environments, Walker meditates on the politics of rhythm, slowness, and presence, positioning the body as a site of temporal, philosophical, and political inquiry. The paper examines how Walker engages with the poetics of performance, revealing how indigenous spiritual traditions like Chan Buddhism can disrupt the structures of modernity and propose decolonial alternatives to temporal and spatial order.

Please note that 720 University Place is not an ADA-accessible space. Increasing physical access to buildings and facilities is a goal of the University, but not all buildings and venues have been updated.