Voluptuous Panic

Perhaps it’s the time change, loss of an hour and all that, but I feel out of sorts this week. Not my usual chipper self. Angry at the computer for failing to entertain me. Bitter about work. Yearning for the freedom to go outside. Desperate to not be trapped inside, feeling futile.

Having spoken to ‘s boyfriend V. on the weekend about industrial design, and knowing that is studying the same thing, I’ve spent a bit of time investigating how I would choose to design my life, aesthetically, under altered circumstances. If I didn’t have two mortgages. If I was living on my own. If I had time and space and funds to devote to surrounding myself with cool things.

This week I think I’ll skip my usual posts in favour of a multi-part series on My Alternate Universe.
Brace yourself, this is going to be image-heavy.

Alternate Life, Part 1: Where I would be right now
Hanging out with in London at the Tate Modern museum, queuing up again and again to ride down Carsten Höller’s adult-sized slide sculptural installations in Turbine Hall, seen below.

“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.”

On the plus side, having spoken to on the phone late last night, I will at least have some company in my blue mood as of next month, when he will be coming up to visit me from New York. For now, I’ll try to focus on Hong Kong with . Soon, soon.

13 thoughts on “Voluptuous Panic”

  2. They have *slides* at the Tate Modern museum? That’s *so* going to the top of my `what to do on my first, long, jet-lagged day in London this summer’ list. Why didn’t I know?

    Sorry you’re feeling blue – I think it might be weather-related too – it’s getting nicer outside, but still not nice enough. Are you coming out for St. Paddy’s day this weekend? I know a good bout of hops & forbidden fried potato products always helps me out of a funk!

    C

  4. Not even a little bit completed. Have you got suggestions? Because I’m taking them! I need a kick in the pants for this event, because my existential malaise is keeping me from going to Malabar to rent an adequately awesome 1940s outfit. Boo.

  5. Hrm. Not off the top of my head, sadly. I was just looking forward to seeing what you’d concocted.

    Bad Malaise! Keeping MoFo from being inspired! She was looking forward to Friday night.

    boo!!!

  8. You can borrow my pearls, if they’ll suit. I don’t think they’re real, but whatever (said Ted Mosby-style).

  9. C.

    The game show I had just finished auditioning for when I ran into you on the subway last summer… I was on, and I won 🙂 6000 bucks!

    B.

  10. Excellent. I intend to harass Mia (she’s in London now) until she submits to my will and goes and does the slide so I can live through her vicariously.

    I know they look seriously permanent, but these slides are only a temporary installation, so I don’t know if they’ll still be around when you visit in the summer. I’m constantly astounded with how huge and immobile looking some of the “temporary” stuff is that they put up in Turbine Hall. When I visited a few years ago, Louise Bourgeois had put up these massive 2-storey high cast iron spiders, but somehow they got those suckers out of there and put these up instead. They apparently had a sculpture that resembled a big, burning ball of gas not unlike the sun in there for a while last year. Those crazy Brits and their modern art.

    St. Patty’s is still up in the air. I’m supposed to be getting together with Darcy G. for some wild chemistry party, but he’s so buried in writing some big-ass paper on nanotech that I haven’t heard from him in a week, so I don’t know if we’re still on for the 17th or not. If you make a full day of it, I might at least join you for beer over brunch or something. Pretty sure Mr. Gentleman’s soiree is an evening activity.

  11. Yes, I have a recurring dream where I jump into a gigantic slide that looks suspiciously like these – metal below and glass on top – and then when I emerge at the bottom, I discover I’m coming out of a feeding chute in a shark tank, and I look up at the watery light filtering down from above to see dark fishy shapes circling towards me because I am Lunch.

    I’m pretty sure I’d have the mother of all panic attacks based on vertigo, claustrophobia, etc. as I got into this contraption, but I would never let something as paltry as fear stop me from doing something truly fun.

    Remember the lesson of the penguin in Fight Club: sliiiiiiide.

  12. I JUST TOTALLY FUCKING SLID DOWN THAT THING LAST WEEK AND IT WAS TOTALLY TOTALLY AWESOME. Except for the part where I was a little afraid my ass might get caught, but I was okay.

  13. Also, my roomies are Irish – from Belfast – and we’re going to Greenwich to a great pub for St. Paddy’s day. Basically we’re going there for lunch and we’re staying ALL DAY. How awesome is that going to be? How drunk am I going to be?

    I am going to go back to the Tate Modern (prolly next week) so I will check how long that installation is going to be there. I cannot believe I forgot to tell you I went down it! I met my friend Heather there and I wouldn’t let her leave until I tried the slide. SO. FUN.

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