Carsten Höller x Kulm Hotel / St. Moritz

A suspension of ordinary perception is born from the collaboration between two forces, the Kulm Hotel St. Moritz in Switzerland, and German-Belgian artist Carsten Höller. Sitting in the vast ice desert of Switzerland, outside of the Kulm Hotel, stands a forever gyrating structure, covered in mirrors and an unmissable pink coat. A pink carousel.

Impossible to miss, this vibrant sculpture sets a distinctive contrast against the icy plains of Switzerland. Although it is not the first time that this natural ice rink hosts objects of interest, in front of the Kulm Country Club, this rink has also been an active participant in past Olympic events and is responsible for playing a major role in the development of winter tourism. The Kulm Hotel rink is believed to be the “hotel that invented winter.” During an interview and press release via the Kulm Hotel’s official website, the artist Carsten Höller talks about his inspiration and reasoning for said sculpture, expressing his intention of setting contradiction on top of contradiction. “

“Today we use it to set our body in motion and to disengage the mind while spinning. But when you slow the movement down, when you let it become calm, it turns into something else, a meditative experience, a gentle, continuous motion in which the sense of speed disappears. This slowness is often a disappointment, especially for children. They expect action, but very little seems to happen. In fact, it seems as though nothing is happening. And yet that quiet uneventfulness is precisely what fascinates me.”

The carousel is set on a loop of very slow velocity, accompanied by a curation of music developed by Arman Naféei, the Kulm Hotel’s Directeur d’Ambiance. It’s eerie, stagnant, and edging. The piece in itself also touches on topics like pleasure, tuning into our own feelings upon expecting a lively experience, such as a ride on a carousel, and encountering instead an unhurried, perhaps anticlimactic experience. Carsten feels that as spectators, humans living, we sometimes dedicate our lives to the search for pleasure, in his opinion unnecessarily so.

By providing a familiar amusing element such as the carousel in a contrasting setting with differently set displays, once on the ride the participant seemingly becomes a part of the performance, which attributes to the beauty of accessible interactive art pieces. Instead of experiencing the expected with these sorts of amusement rides, one may encounter instead feelings of relaxation, meditation, displacement, and even peaceful enjoyment. The rich juxtaposition of colors and ambiance, along with the slow rotation, slows down time, your mind, and maybe your incessant search for pleasure. A true, real life time machine, and it’s pink.