Singing Canaries Mobile, 2009
'Carsten Höller holds a doctorate in biology, and he uses his training as a scientist in his work as an artist, concentrating particularly on the nature of human relationships. Viewer participation is the key to all of Höller's sculptures, but it is less an end in itself than a vehicle to informally test the artist's theories concerning human perception and physiological reactions. Equal parts scientific experiment and sensual encounter, Höller's works are most frequently devoted to his singular obsession—chemically analyzing the nature of human emotions.
'His artistic work often explores theories of evolution that regard human sentiments, such as love and happiness, primarily as strategies for the successful reproduction of genetic material and he often, in a rather playful way, observes the human being as an animal amongst other animals. In the early 1990s, he invented a number of objects aimed at the products of unfettered reproductive instincts - that is to say, at children. This included, for example, a bicycle which exploded at the first push of the pedal.
'“I’m interested in the idea of the self-experiment, including the project of life as an experiment on one’s self,” Höller says. In a way, he has moved from studying the communication between insects by scent -- his former specialty -- to observing the reactions of the public, and himself, to his own extraordinary projects.' -- Martin Gayford, Bloomberg.com
Interview w/Carsten Höller
Carsten Höller lecture interrupted by naked men
Show
Y, 2003
960 lightbulbs, aluminium, wood, cables, electronic circuitry, light signs, mirrors
Overall Installation: approx. 1300 x 850 x 320 cm
Forte dei Marmi Ballerina, 2007
117,5 x 149 cm C-Prints mounted on aluminum
Mirror Carousel, 2005
Revolving Hotel Room, 2008
Chairs, table, bed, wardrobe, light bulbs, steel construction, 4 glass platforms, engine approx. 600 x 600 cm, 180 cm (incl. furniture)
'The Revolving Hotel Room is a complete hotel room, including a bedside table and mini-bar, mounted on four revolving discs. While the exhibition is running visitors will be able to book into this exclusive room with its constantly changing view. Guests in the Revolving Hotel Room have twenty-four-hour access to the entire museum.'
Doppelpilzvitrine (10 Doppelpilze), 2009
10 mushroom replicas in different sizes (polyurethane, acrylic paint), vitrine (steel frame, glass)
Giant Mushroom Upside Down Room, 2007
Test Site, 2008
Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London
Hippopotamus, 2007
Orang Outan, 2001
Rhinoceros, 2005
bi-resin, polyvinyl, polyurethane foam and polyester resin, glass eyes, horns
Spheres, 2001
Killing Children I, 1992
Killing Children II, 1992
The jerry can is filled with gas; if one rides the tricycle, the match burns the wick.
Light Room, 2008
Double LED lamps, aluminum sheeting, cables, controller system
The Snow Show, 2006
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p.s. RIP: Louise Bourgeois. Hey. It's another day wherein there is nothing too new or exciting to tell you, so ... ** Chris (British), You get winter today, and we get summer today. A simple and easily explainable fact, but trippy. It sure doesn't feel like summer outside. Does it feel like winter? So, then what kind(s) of non-shitty jobs are you hellbent on getting? ** _Black_Acrylic, Glad your hard drive was a toughie. Sorry it's an expensive toughie. ** Bill, I know, I felt really bad that my blog doesn't offer Helvetica as an option. Really nice, clear pix of the Illuseum's rooms. Would it be okay if I use them with full credit in my Illusuem post? How are your last Amsterdamian days going? ** David Ehrenstein, Wow, I knew not about that Morrissey movie, or rather I'd heard its title, and that's it. Weird about a very young Lagerfeld being in it. I wonder if Lagerfeld is why the film's not available. He's infamously controlling of every fraction of his image these days. Yeah, you mentioned Theresa Russell's jazz singing. Would imagine there'll be recordings soon, no? ** John, Good news. They say your feet are your meat, don't they? ** Alan, If I have read Zola, it's so long ago and so lost in the sands of memory that I might as well not have ever read him. I think I will now, though. Book club selection maybe? ** Wolf, No fucking kidding. Israel is starting to make the Bush era US seem like Nepal. Well, not quite. The way the fascist Israeli government plays the underdog card is what evil is all about. ** JoeM, Glad you're seeing the doc. Blood pressure issue would make sense. Definitely a very good idea to get your blood pressure checked and take whatever measures -- meds or ? --the doctor advises, if that turns out to be the culprit. ** Joseph, Milk that unemployment for your art, man, definitely. Most people I know who move and try to find a place to live in advance end up saying fuck it and getting a motel for a week or so when they first arrive at the new locale. Do you know anybody in your new hood who could do some legwork for you? Reading poems nude news, cool. Pray tell when the iron's hot. New with me? Just working on the novel 80% of my time at the moment. Nothing's new at the moment, in other words. ** Frank Jaffe, You were my single wisher of a happy Memorial Day, so it meant a lot. I'll try to remember to wish you a happy Bastille Day. I've never seen 'Repo'. Almost rented it during my last LA visit. Think I'll hold off. I don't think the topic of the Lambda Literary Awards has been creased here before. Very cool if kind of comical that Kevin Killian's book won the Best Erotica Award. Certainly deserved, but a bit of a low end prize for such a superb book. You know, I was one of the Lammy judges. It was a secret, but I think it's okay to reveal that now. I was one of, I think, five judges of the Gay Male Debut Fiction prize. Consensus judging long distance by a group of people who don't know each other at all is pretty weird, but it was fun to do. ** Chris Goode, Nicely intense batch, yeah. Since that slave's English was pretty good, I think/hope 'word' was intentional too. Doubt it, sadly. I haven't seen a piece by Ron Athey in quite a few years. Based on the number of his performances that I saw back when, I ... think he's a charming person. The high religious/ tribal/ Baptist preacher thing he was into wasn't my thing. But it's been a while. How's QUN and everything else? ** Sypha, Are you reading 'AP' again as, like, a pre-'Imperial Bedrooms' ritual? It doesn't sound like you're enjoying the rereading experience all that much. ** Statictick, Really? About Aaron, I mean? That's bizarre. Well, some industrious slave or fake slave got his hands on your pal's pix somewhere, I guess. Either that or your pal is doing some kind of secret experiment in autobiographical narrative or something. I'll briefly stand-up for the website in question and say it's not pathetic, it's just easy to misuse. Anyway, if Aaron has anything to say about the curious coincidence, I'd be curious to know. ** Tristan's Mum, Your pride is fully justified. ** Ken Baumann, Yeah, I think the book club could work. We'll see, I guess. But, yeah, I love it when this place spontaneously grows new branches, and that one seems potentially ... leafy? Hm, I shouldn't start metaphors that I can't eventually twirl. LCD Sound System, nice. I've never seen them live. The new album is pretty tasty, I agree. Ha ha, actually, you were right the first time: it's Yury not Yuri. Best of the best, man. ** Dandysweets, Hi, pal. Nice of you to say that to Oscar. I agree. That WWASP thing is totally scary. I've been looking into it a bit since you brought it to our attention. The more you investigate, the more evil it grows. Jesus. And, yeah, I'm with you: the death penalty is completely barbaric. Don't worry about the negativity. I like negativity just fine. Speaking of negativity, Rufus Wainwright's voice is one of my ideas of hell, so I stay away from him as best I can. But I'm glad it was a nice concert. I'm going to try to go to a concert tonight myself (Atlas Sound, Polvo) if it's not sold out. Have a lovely day. ** Steevee, Absolutely 100% yes on the Israeli government's never ending descent. ** Koes, If I can get Jonathan to give me sound files of his music and videos of his performance works and stuff, I will do a Day on him. He's pretty shy though, so we'll see. In the meantime, here's a slightly dated, not entirely revealing picture of him performing naked. It's your birthday! Happy birthday, Koes! Survive the family part and accept my imaginary toast! ** Ammcartney, Hey, Alistair! Is there any visa-related progress? I think we're about to try for another US tourist visa for Yury, gulp. My novel has been behaving itself pretty well the past three or so days. Excellent about the breakthrough with yours. What stage are you at right now? I mean, do have a full rough draft yet? If so, how rough? You and Tim have a blast the SF reading, and give the marvelous Michele Tea a big hi and hug from me. ** Slatted Light, If I were truly the brave, wildly experimenting author I claim, I would have used the residue (yikes, sorry) from my few bottoming test cases in my work and not just grinned, beared it, and survived. 10,000 books is a whole lot of books, man. Where do you keep them? How do you organize them? Which one did you go read? Have you read Mike Young's upcoming Publishing Genius book? It's great. I blurbed it. It's great. ** Pascal, 'Synechdoche' didn't exactly set the box office on fire, so I imagine he's in long term development hell at the moment. I think you could be right about the particular similarities/ differences/ clashings of Scalapino's work and mine. The situating of her voice inside the sexual, and her kind of act of surrendering her form and language and rhythm and so on to the herd, as you put it, or the herd sensuality or something, is impressive but not useful to me in some way. Strange. I agree she's a very impressive writer though, don't get me wrong. Thanks about the theater piece. Hopefully, it'll all be just fine, and the struggles will work their own magic. ** Misanthrope, Yeah, if Kevin Smith's stuff gives you pleasure, that's all that matters. I'll hurl my tomatoes in private. So, are they going to do more Star Wars movies? I don't know if that's a good idea or not. It seems to me they shot their wad in 'Empire' way back when, and every movie since then has been a matter of just treading water, trying to reawaken the corpse, and greed. But I'm not a Star Wars guy, obviously. I was just thinking about Rallo the other day. Sounds like Tender Prey has something up his sleeve. ** Flit, So, it's a good thing: the extended library gig. Sounds kind of like it is. It would be awesome if you want to do the workshop. No pressure or anything. The workshop happens whenever someone wants to use it. Whenever you're ready, say the word or send something to me. Love to you, pal. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, What other country are you moving to again? I think maybe you said before, but my mind has stoned that information. I kind of agree with you on the escort texts, but the thing is that 90% of the profiles I troll through every month while looking for texts that I think are worthy or interesting or something are of the feckless, defenseless sort to the point where they all end up saying the same things with a sincerity that is hard to differentiate. The ones who try to subvert that and catch the eye, show off a bit, and assert some peculiarity end up being very refreshing, and I usually grab them. But they're a huge amount less common than my monthly posts make them seem. ** Tender Prey, Thanks, Marc, about the slaves post. Sometimes I get lucky. Yeah, very sad about Louise Bourgeois, and amazing that she was making work, and, based on the very recent stuff in her retrospective last year, very strong work up until a few days before she died. Really glad to hear you got a new drawing done. I'd really like to try a workshop here with visual art in the saddle. I'm imagining it would work best if the artist were around a lot, and if the comments were more interactive than with the writing workshop. I don't know. I guess as soon as someone feels like being the first, we'll find out. Oh, yes, I did get your email, and I meant to write back to you ages ago. I'm so fried and bad with correspondence right now, it's awful. The thing is, I love the idea of doing the show, and the only issue was/is that I'm so incredibly swamped between now and later July. With the rehearsals and then the premiere in Avignon, my time and mind-space between now and mid-July is heavily occupied and pretty full of stress to boot. At the same time, I want to do the blog show idea very badly, and I wanted to jump at the opportunity fearing it might be the only or best shot. And my confusion is why I held off on saying yes or no. I should have just said no, but ... yeah. Ultimately, I think it's just too much for late July. If there's another opportunity a little later on, I would absolutely love to take it. I'm really sorry not to have gotten back to you about that sooner. And, most of all, thank you so much for asking, Marc. I really love the possibility. ** Justin, It looked kind of purplish to me. It's some kind of not natural color almost for sure. Pixar is considering the 'God Jr.' movie, apparently, so, hey, you never know. Dance is actually pretty big over here in Europe. The famous choreographers sell out pretty huge venues here in Paris. Thanks, man. ** Will Decker, I might go to the party/event for the Duvert bio. I kind of don't like parties, though, and the not speaking French hardly at all doesn't help either. Maybe I'll try to be in the neighborhood and peek in the window to see what it is. You found yourself/us some pretty nice links there, thank you. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, I'm glad you wrote some and felt better afterwards. I can't wait until I can read some of it one of these days. What an eventful neighborhood walk you had there. Or the first part, at least. Americans are so friendly sometimes. I forget that. Nice Broadcast song. No, I haven't seen that movie 'Valerie and Her Week of Wonders'. I've always wanted to. One of the comments below the clip said the movie is on Youtube, so maybe seeing it is easy. Congrats to your engaged friend. Yeah, I guess that's good, right? If they're waiting for two years though, I wonder what the chances are that there'll be a wedding? That's too cynical, probably. I'll look for Nurse Jackie. If there's a way, I have the will. My day: Uh, oh, I met up with Davidc, a long time d.l., although he hasn't posted here so much of late, and his spouse Dominic. We met in front of the Centre Pompidou and then had coffee at the sort of famous Cafe Beaubourg. It was nice, just catching up and talking about Paris and the UK and this and that. We did that for quite a while, and then I walked them to the metro stop Strasbourg St. Denis where they caught a train to the Galleries Lafayette to go shopping for the perfect salt and pepper shakers, whatever that would entail. Not Eiffel Tower-shaped shakers 'cos I jokingly suggested that and it did not play well. Then I came home, and I worked on the novel, and I had another coffee, this time with the Kiddiepunk and Oscar B. I decided the other day I want to go to Amsterdam for a couple of days just for fun, and they said they're totally into going, and Yury's into going too, so I guess we'll figure that out. Otherwise, I just worked on my novel. I realized this one scene that I've been killing myself trying to get right can be just cut out entirely, so that was good. Ate, etc., and another day came to its not so mighty conclusion. Not bad, not great. What about Tuesday? ** JW Veldhoen, Rausch, rausch, rausch. ** Brendan, I'm glad you're you. Plus, I like 'r' better than 'l'. It's less phallic and more like an upside down butt crack. Oh, good, my first link of the day. Everyone, Brendan formerly Blendin and in point of fact the artist Brendan Lott is making awesome collages, one a day, and now they are finally viewable to those of you who are not on Facebook, and viewable means here. Go there. I think the DC's Book Club is going to work, man. Hands were raised. Yeah, give it some thought, and get back to us/me/whoever with your ideas, and let's do this fucker! ** David, Al Green strikes again! I haven't seen that 'Assassination of Jesse James' movie yet. I've been planning to for ages. Any movie that borrows extensively from Malick's work, as I understand it does, gets a head start with me. ** Creative Massacre, I hope it went well with your surgeon, my friend. Tell me what happened, okay? ** 文輝 , Wow, you're in a generous mood today. You have any ladyboy sites? I could use one of those. ** Mark, Hey, Mark! Better late than never, and thank you a lot, man. I'll go open the gift as soon as I finish this, but in the meantime ... Everyone, D.l. Mark missed the birthday party, but he's showing up late with his hat in his hand and a birthday gift for all of us. Here's the card that comes with it, in his words: 'My contribution, written specifically for the occasion, is but a trifle, but I like that it uses a lot of 5s in rhythm, melody, etc. On the other hand, it’s admittedly kind of sappy-sounding and maybe should have been kept in the vault for good, but here it is nonetheless, better badly belated than never, I guess.' How are you, Mark? What's going on? I'd love to hear. ** Jax, I know, right? Imagine my saucer-sized eyes when I found that sucker. ** Math, You don't sound dickish in the slightest. Well, O and Kp and I can try to keep you on the straight and narrow, although, uh, I'm not sure if I'll still be living here then, come to think of it. Technically, my time here is up in December, but I'm hoping to get an extension somehow. ** Marcus, Hey, M! Thanks a ton for the catch up. Very, very curious to hear the pop project album. I don't how I keep filling this place up. Thank god for kindly guest-hosts. They're probably the reason. Really, about Japan? I'm getting the sinking feeling that the hard promise I got that I would get to go along on the Japan tour has been broken, which is not happiness. But that's my problem, sorry. Take care and take it every way you can get it, man. ** Oscar B, I know, I know about Louise Bourgeois. So sad. Performance element? Let's go, you bet. Talk to you in just a short bit. ** Bye. Carten Höller is in my galerie today. I think he's pretty interesting. See what you think. See you tomorrow.
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