Slides!!

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So, as I had told myself I would, on my last day in London, once the rest of the US gang had gone home, I went first thing with my friend Adam to get tickets to the slides at the Tate.


The slides are the exhibit in the Turbine Hall of the museum, a huge empty hall designated for large works where they invite an artist to simply come in and do whatever they'd like with the space (essentially).


So Carsten Holler built 4 giant slides, one off of each floor in the museum (I, of course, went for the one from the top floor-wheeeeeeee). It was super fun and after reading Holler's idealogy, I love these slides even more. I can't seem to work out links so I'm putting in some selections from the Tate website describing the project:


"For Carsten Höller, the experience of sliding is best summed up in a phrase by the French writer Roger Caillois as a 'voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind'. The slides are impressive sculptures in their own right, and you don't have to hurtle down them to appreciate this artwork. What interests Höller, however, is both the visual spectacle of watching people sliding and the 'inner spectacle' experienced by the sliders themselves, the state of simultaneous delight and anxiety that you enter as you descend."


And there was indeed that. They take your ticket and you get in a little canvas sack to keep from snagginf on anything I guess. For the top floors they even provide elbow pads and stylish helmets should you desire them. There is a handout when you pick up your tickets ssaying that "the slides on levels 4 and 5 are fast and the experience is physical." I wasn't sure quite how to interpret that, but it sounded like something I'd like. And I loved it. After launching myself down the slide with a good swinging push, I think I must've giggled the entire way down. Adam described feeling positively refreshed after his ride. But the most brilliant thing of all Holler's crazy ideas is that:


"he sees it as a prototype for an even larger enterprise, in which slides could be introduced across London, or indeed, in any city. How might a daily dose of sliding affect the way we perceive the world? Can slides become part of our experiential and architectural life?"


Indeed. Slides all around. I love it. Go Holler.

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Comments

[djc]

nice slides! there was a time, and i'm being stone cold dead serious here, when i was developing a plan to build one leading from my window to the lawn behind keefe. i still might. london looks jolly fun.