Arts Slides Redux
posted by on October 12 at 10:27 AM
I don’t know how I forgot this yesterday when I posted about the giant slides at the Tate Modern, but in 2003, I went down one of Carsten Høller’s art slides at the ICA in Boston.
The experience, obviously, was not memorable. It was awkward. I laid stiffly in the slide and let the “fun” happen. It was the middle of a weekday and almost nobody else was in the museum. It was quiet. The slide snaked down the narrow atrium at the center of the building, and I made a muffled clattering noise on my way down, catching a glimpse of the sourpuss guy at admissions as I rode absurdly by him. I remember feeling, above all, like a square. When I was deposited at the bottom, I got up, brushed myself off like an embarrassed cat preening after doing something stupid, and exited the museum.
I rode Holler's PVC slide at PS1 in, oh, 2001 or so. It had some real height, which I think is crucial for the slides, so that you get a near-weightlessness as you race down the steep bends. I went down with the kids of one of the museum guards, who we befriended by bodyslamming them and my toddler son on the huge mattress at the Bed of Sound exhibition (which then went to the Henry). I thought it was superfun.
Western Bridge discussed commissioning a slide from Carsten for Western Bridge, around the same time Bill and Ruth True bought his "Neon Circle," but we feared the vertical drop wasn't enough to provide sufficient discombobulation. In an ideal situation, which I think the Turbine Hall provides, the slide should produce the same sort of physical dissociation and mildly hallucinogenic experience that much of his best work, including Neon Circle, is designed to generate.
My favorite slide is the one he designed for Miuccia Prada, at her studio in Milan, which apparently departs from her office and deposits her at her car.
Can Ikea-style ball rooms be art too? How about swings?
Absolutely they can: viz. Martin Creed's "Work No. 360: Half the air in a given space," 2004.
http://www.martincreed.com/workno360.html
the real question is.... When will SuttonCullerBeres *borrow* this idea and unleash it on the easily impressed Seattle scene as their next hip, and (un)original work of art?
Charlatans - Please don't give those guys any cred- they're dysfunctional pretty boys who will soon disperse into the miasma of fellow halfwits.
Western Bridge on the other hand has something going on, more than half decent show currently,
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