Slow is rarely described as a quality in a person. It is often used to exclaim and escalate laziness, lack of motivation, or even intelligence. The world seeks for the fastest and awards them with medals, trophies, promotions, praise, and seems to curse the slowest, deeming them as annoying and useless (mostly electronic and similar devices, as slow people probably don’t get even enough attention to be cursed out, or at least hear it…). In a fast-moving world, we’re often forgetting how slow teaches us patience and sensibility, caution and intuition. We usually let anything slowly get even slower, until eventually it is slowed down completely, it stops. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, of course, depends on the context.
Slow Press is a low-budget publishing, journal style project, highlighting the seemingly impractical thoughts of artists and designers, focusing on words of encouragement, joy, hopefulness, and fun. Turning away from competition or confirmation and seeking truth and inspiration from each other, without stressing about the wide importance, meaning and recognition of our work, but rather taking honesty for merit.
SLOW PRESS, ISSUE #1
WOR(L)DS OF ENCOURAGEMENT
valentin radulović
tjaša cizej
olja simčič jerele
ester ivakič
matevž lovšin
vita eva weisseisen
interview: vita eva weisseisen in conversation with neo nor
editor: vita eva weisseisen
graphic design: vita eva weisseisen
march 2026
SLOW PRESS, ISSUE #2
HEAT WAVE
ester ivakič
matevž lovšin
luka lavrenci
lenča malec
iva suhadolnik gregorin
sasha ventura
vita eva weisseisen
illustrations: sangara perhaj
interview: vita eva weisseisen in conversation with tjaša cizej
editor: vita eva weisseisen
graphic design: vita eva weisseisen
july 2026
A secret, hidden garden, breathing and living behind tall, concrete residential buildings, guarding it and hiding it from all suspicion, suppressing the outside world of chaos and noise, protecting it from the busy streets of cars, bikes, trucks, busses, trams, trains and people. If you are lucky enough to have a bedroom window overlooking an inner yard …
When night falls over the city and when only the occasional humming and hissing and whistling of the train would rock the cosy, mysterious darkness, and the humidity and the heat would keep awake most of the people, but not you. Laying by the open window, the smell of trees and bushes and grass are lightly crawling one by one into the room, and with them a nice cool cool breeze, a strain of nice refreshing air tickles you to slumber. But soon, the night gets interrupted with big explosive lighting and loud boom boom thunder, air thickens and it seems like the garden invited the flash, sucked it into itself like a vacuum cleaner, and the inner yard became a stage for the big angry thunderstorm - peak of summer is here.
When it’s too hot to think the only thing left to do is rest. As the sun is pressing hard against everything it reaches, we don’t have a choice, but to slow down: the days are long and the heat is strong, and soon we find ourselves forced to accept our boring fate - we lay around any chance we get, waiting for the sun to set a little lower, so we can finally start the day in the evening light. Weirdly, it’s not a time when we would reflect on things, despite all the time the long days offer us. We rather spend them recklessly, almost believing regular time does not exist and this is an era where everything is allowed, nothing is frowned upon. Despite the burning red red heat and the induced laziness, we suddenly want to live our lives to the fullest. But not in an optimistic kind-of way that we do in the spring, when we wake up fresh from our winter sleep, ready to go, but more in a careless, daredevil kinda way, firmly believing this is the time, our last chance to come alive before cold winds reappear and winter starts knocking on our door. Nothing matters anymore, the thought of losing the unbearable sun and excruciating heat shoots up our spine into our brain and we become unstoppable, now or never. We almost become mischievous - long nights spent by the river or the sea, day drinking, merging days and nights together when we stay up till morning…we return to the simple playfulness and we are not judged - because it’s summer. Everything is allowed. The only thing that sobers us up from time to time is a spontaneous summer thunderstorm.
Heat wave brings us to a boiling point - should we stay in and remain cautious or do we jump in the river and hope for the best? Are heat waves really only in the summer or are they occurring throughout all the seasons? Is there a possibility we have been living in a heat wave of some sort for the past few years? What is a heat wave? And are there pros and cons to it?
Spring carries not only beautiful colours of hope and light, but within them also ideas of rebirth, renewal, regrowth. As it slowly rolls in and starts unfolding before our eyes, we can’t help but jump up and down with excitement; we’re witnessing the most obvious exhibit of the carelessness of our nature, which will proceed its cycle no matter what, forgetting us immediately, even though we were waiting for her the whole long winter. But we can’t stay mad at her, as spring does not allow itself to be overrun by despair, anger, or nihilism. It’s full of hope, passion and enthusiasm. A form of resistance is embracing joy, pleasure, sensuality, and love – refusing to give in to despair. Centring on emotions, memories, and fantasies – elements that are ultimately essential for survival.
Obsessed with institutions, being confirmed, acknowledged, it's a vicious, magic, endless circle, deciding for us what will be important and what won’t be. Going after recognition, depending on institutions, chasing success, is understandable when, of course, it is needed for one's survival, but consequentially, we are forgetting the true gist of creating, taking this conformity as a merit of our capabilities and knowledge and overall practise. Maybe we should distance ourselves a bit from all of that, especially in this uncertain, chaotic period of time, that may also be pushing us towards the so-called safety of conformation. But this is also the time that should push us towards community and inspire us to step away from these confirmed practises and institutions that are eventually telling us what is good and what is not, deciding who will do it and who will not. While, again, real life requires most of us to respect that and maybe even achieve that, we still have a choice to dedicate at least some of our time to the childish, naive, simple, joyous, fun, funny thoughts and words that shouldn’t be confirmed by anyone, that are to be true and honest and unfiltered, almost like a stream of consciousness, and soon enough they won’t be meaningless or worthless and naive, they will show us through time how very important they are. They can act as a form of rebellion against the institutionalised anything, a rebellion against the system that wants you to be hopeless and pessimistic in attempt to destroy your will to fight or question, a rebellion against the mass production (of anything at this point) or mass reduction (of thought, perhaps). They should be words of encouragement and inspiration, critical, naive, playful…whatever you want them to be.
