Art this summer is all about putting a smile on your face and a shine on your trousers. Yes, Carsten Höller’s slides – which we fell headover-heels for (though it had to be feet first) at Tate Modern in 2006 – return to London.
They’ll be in a new location on the South Bank for the German-Belgian artist’s retrospective at the Hayward Gallery: attached to the façade of the building (see above), these brilliant childhood-regression machines offer the speediest exit from Höller’s show. But they’re not the only interactive artworks in this hands- and bums-on extravaganza. You’ll also be strapped to flying machines that will whizz you high over Waterloo Bridge, wander among giant rotating mushrooms and don augmented-reality headsets that make you think you’re walking through trees. You might even get to spend the night in a roaming robotic bed.
It’s not just fun and games, mind. Fascinated by the social spaces we share, Höller is a man on a mission to redefine the way we interact with art, our surroundings and each other. And his art goes way beyond the confines of any gallery. So the challenge we set him was to reimagine London as a series of interactive artworks in his own inimitable style. We provided the locations, he provided the ideas. And here’s the public art our favourite new town planner came up with.
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