Carsten Höller's "Stockholm Slides" invites you to a controlled fall from Moderna Museet
text Natalia Muntean
A new large-scale art installation transforming the facade of Moderna Museet is more than a slide. It is a physical exercise in surrendering control. “Stockholm Slides,” a pair of spiral slides by internationally renowned artist Carsten Höller, opened to the public last week.
The artwork consists of two identical, mirror-image slides, each 39 meters long, allowing two people to ride simultaneously in what the artist describes as a “mirrored choreography.” But for Höller, the core of the experience lies in the psychological state it induces. “In a slide, you must give up everything to do with your own control.” Höller elaborates on the unique tension of the ride: “You know exactly what is going to happen. There is no surprise… But you cannot do anything during the process between the beginning and the end.”
This regulated loss of control is, for the artist, the source of a powerful and contradictory sensation, finding this duality fascinating, placing the rider “on two extremes simultaneously. You have hard joy and fear.”
When asked if the work, a literal controlled fall, relates to the contemporary feeling of political or environmental free-fall, Höller acknowledged the metaphor while also emphasising the openness of art. “It’s an artwork, which means we cannot say it means this or that. It means many things. And I think that’s the great thing about art, that it’s not just one thing, but many, many, many things.”
This perspective aligns with Höller’s history of creating what he calls “influential environments” – installations designed to provoke specific states of mind like disorientation, doubt and exhilaration. “Stockholm Slides” invites visitors to physically release control, challenging the traditional passive museum visit, and exploring what it means to fall and to let go.
