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Carsten Höller Experiments On Visitors At The New Museum

The German artist transforms the museum into part laboratory, part playground. Oh, and there’s a giant slide.

We’re no strangers to the concept of art as scientific experiment or the notion of artist as researcher, but put a 102-foot slide and a “sensory deprivation pool” called Psycho Tank in the middle of the New Museum, and you’ll certainly pique our interests. And those are just a few of the beguiling sensory experiments-cum-art installations assembled in Carsten Höller’s whimsical solo show “Experience”, which opened at the New Museum earlier this week.

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In a previous life, Höller worked as a scientist before giving up that career in 1993 to pursue a full-time artistic practice. But even as an artist, his work is still heavily informed by his research and experiment-driven past. It’s often easy to find yourself feeling like a lab rat while subjecting yourself to Höller’s weird and wonderful creations, although, as exhibition curator Massimiliano Gioni pointed out in his opening remarks, it can often be unclear who’s driving the outcome of these experiments—is the scientist training the actions of the mouse or is it the mouse that’s training the actions of the scientist?

Untitled (Slide). Image courtesy Mary Altaffer/AP.

Nowhere is this ambiguity felt more acutely than in Höller’s Experience Corridor, where visitors undertake simple tests that throw their sense of perception off-kilter—donning 3D glasses to create a disorienting visual experience not unlike one you might experience under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs (The Forest) or using electrical medical vibrators to give visitors the sensation that their nose is alternately growing or receding into their nasal cavity (The Pinocchio Effect). Up and down the hallway, visitors could be heard asking one another, “Did you feel it? Did it work for you?”, looking for some sort of affirmation or answers indicating what it was, exactly, that they were supposed to be experiencing here, as the intended effect wasn’t always apparent.

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The Pinnochio Effect

As an artist associated with the theory of relational aesthetics, which aims to set up social environments and models for participation and interaction, this type of experimental ambiguity is not uncommon for Höller or his peers. In fact, the unsettling nature of never quite knowing what to expect or what the proper way to engage with an installation is on the part of the viewer is often intentional. Yet even though we know that not knowing is, for many reasons, part of the fun, the pieces we found ourselves most moved by were ones where we knew exactly what we were getting ourselves into.

The Mirror Carousel, for instance, subverts our expectations of a traditional carousel by slowing down its movement to a barely perceptible crawl, while the reflective exterior plays with our spatial perceptions and turns the room in on itself. The warped amusement ride is contemplative and transfixing, slowing one’s thoughts down to the pace of the carousel itself. But at the end of the day, it’s still a carousel and functions as such, and Höller’s riffs on the traditional structure and design of the ride are subtle enough to integrate seamlessly into our expectations of the experience.

The author riding the Mirror Carousel.

This soothing and visually stimulating experience is juxtaposed nicely with the sense of tension and foreboding building on the opposite side of the room where visitors are waiting in line to ride Untitled (Slide). Conceived as an “alternate means of transportation” through the museum, the massive slide literally bisects the building, stretching from the fourth to the second floor. Although it’s largely similar to your standard amusement or water park slide, in the context of a museum it seems somehow more menacing and precarious, especially when presented as an “experiment” of sorts. Of course it’s this sense of anxiety and anticipation that’s the real “meat” of this particular installation, as the actual ride itself is brief and rather anti-climactic, though undeniably fun.

Straddling the line between laboratory and playground, Experience is perhaps most successful as a re-imagining of the museum space and the kinds of experiences visitors might find there. And if nothing else, the slide and Psycho Tank (which we, sadly, didn’t get to visit) are sure to draw a curious crowd.