Oolong is a video-led work shaped by footage shot mainly in Vietnam. Landscapes, rivers, vegetation, boats, and urban spaces unfold in slow, attentive images. Rather than documenting a journey, the film turns place into a shifting visual experience: a world of movement and stillness, presence and distance, where time seems to steep into the image.
The videos can be experienced separately or as a continuous 69-minute audiovisual work. Their pacing and composition draw on the gestures of cinema—framing, duration, slow motion, and montage—while the sound deepens and unsettles what we see. Each video is paired with a track named after a tea blend, linking the work’s changing visual and sonic textures to oolong’s range of oxidation, from 1% to 99%.
The project also exists as a 74-minute ambient, minimal-symphonic album. “Oolong” transliterates the Chinese words for “black dragon,” a name associated with the shape of the leaves as they unfurl in hot water. The album is Slavin’s second release on Mille Plateaux, following the Insomniac City CD/DVD in 2006.
Cinema Black Dragon.
