roller coasters

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Art

Ride EJ Hill’s Bubblegum Pink Roller Coaster Through a Mass MoCA Gallery

Throughout the Jim Crow era, Black people were often barred entry to recreation spaces like public swimming pools and amusement parks. As these sites of leisure and joy were officially desegregated following the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case, those who continued to champion separation imposed new restrictions to control access to such areas. This included charging high fees to even enter the parks rather than smaller prices per ride, a practice that’s still widely in use today and has proliferated to other cultural arenas like museums.

Artist EJ Hill considers the racialized legacy of such entertainment through Brake Run Helix, the Los Angeles-based artist’s largest solo show to date and first at an institution. On view through January 2024 at the Massachusettes Museum of Contemporary Art, the exhibition revolves around the roller coaster as a way to excavate the history of identity, recreation, and pleasure. Through sculptures, installations, paintings, and smaller works, Hill considers the rides “public monuments to the possibility of attaining joy,” a feeling that is necessary for creating an equitable society.

The center of Brake Run Helix—this title references the mechanisms that slow or stop the cars and the 360-degree turn within the track—is a 260-foot bubblegum pink roller coaster. “Brava!” allows for a single rider, who emerges on a bright blue cart through a velvet curtain before plummeting a few feet and riding the undulating architecture through the Building 5 gallery.

 

Hill sees these rides as a sort of solo performance by museum visitors, who are propelled by gravity around the course before halting on a wooden stage in front of viewers. “I’m no longer interested in being the one to perform for a ravenous audience who wants to either celebrate me or consume me,” the artist told The New York Times in reference to earlier projects that involved him standing or lying atop an artwork for long periods. “I’m making this elaborate stage for other people to perform while I collect myself and recharge.”

Hill’s manner of inhabiting the world as a Black, queer person is also reflected in the pastel pink that runs throughout the exhibition, considering the pigment is traditionally associated with the feminine. “I feel like I understand bodily threat in a very real way. Every day when I leave my place, the threat to my bodily existence is palpable,” he said in that same interview, sharing that the interactive installation is a way “to bring people as much as I can to understanding what that feels like, but in a space of joy, of being a human in the world.”

For more of Hill’s multi-disciplinary works, visit his site and Instagram.

 

Animation Art

An Amusement Park-Themed Animated Short by Fernando Livschitz Goes Off the Rails

The fate of riders on roller coasters and ferris wheels takes an unexpected turn in “Beautiful Chaos”, a new short from Fernando Livschitz of Black Sheep Films (previously). We won’t give too much away, but the minute-long animation uses digital editing to make amusement park rides perform stomach-churning tricks. Let’s just say… don’t try this at home.  Watch more of Livschitz’s animations on Vimeo and Instagram.

 

Amazing

Front Row Videographer Creates Astounding Distortions While Looping Through A Roller Coaster

In this video by YouTube user Jeb Corliss, the adventurer takes his Go Pro camera to Six Flags Magic Mountain to film his front row ride through one of the park’s many roller coasters. As Corliss flies through the ride’s twists and turns, the camera creates one mind-bending distortion after another. By putting the footage through stabilization during the stitching process, he and the other passengers loop alongside the rollercoaster with a blown out perspective similar to a fisheye lens.

Art

Cut Rice Paper Sculptures of Twisting Rollercoasters by Bovey Lee

Early last year, artist Bovey Lee (previously) made the move from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles, experiencing the overwhelming emotions and turmoil one faces when moving across the country. As a way to reconcile the differences between the two cities, Bovey began working on a new body of cut rice paper artworks that display the features and landscapes of her old and new lives as if twisted together on the spiraling tracks of rollercoasters.

Cut by hand from Chinese xuan paper, the pieces depict collisions of skyscrapers and flower bouquets, buffalos carrying mountainous stacks of suitcases, and in a piece titled Eternity – The Rescuer tumbling wedding cakes are surrounded by storm clouds. She shares with us about the new work:

Speaking to the motivation of my relocation, the works also feature imagery associated with romantic relationships, and wedding bouquets, engagement rings, cakes, and eternity symbols populate the pieces. In these works, I draw parallels between one’s romantic relationship and our relationship with nature. While seeking balance, eternity, stability, and harmony in both relationships, the journey we take on are often complex, dramatic, changing, and lopsided. But there is also incredible beauty, energy, richness, and even whimsy in chaos and imperfections through the ups and downs, and trial and error.

Many of these pieces will be on view starting next week at Gavlak Gallery for her show titled Divertical (a name taken from the world’s tallest water rollercoaster) starting January 9th. What you see here is just a fraction of her latest art, see plenty more in her 2015 gallery.

Art

Hundreds of Colorful Café Chairs Take the Form of a Winding Roller Coaster in the Middle of a French Square

Baptiste Debombourg (previously here and here) has transformed a public square using the very objects that typically occupy it—taking 1,200 café chairs and forming them into an elaborate roller coaster. Although the installation is static, Debombourg created movement within the sculpture by incorporating six bright colors and four sky-high loops that twist and turn far from the ground.

The installation, titled Stellar, was built as a part of Le Voyage à Nantes, and will be located within the Place du Bouffay in Nantes, France until August 20th. Its inspiration stems from addressing the great presence of outdoor cafés and restaurants within the city center, as well as an artwork Robert Delaunay produced for the Paris World’s Fair in 1937. (via Junk Culture)

Art

This is a GIF of a Vine of a Video of a Flipbook of a GIF of a Video of a Roller Coaster

Could this be the most meta thing on the entire internet? Just so we’re clear, the title isn’t a typo. This really is a GIF of a Vine of a video of a flipbook of a GIF of a video of a roller coaster. Created yesterday by Televandalist using a handy Flipbookit.