Slides are Fun (and Art?)

Suprisingly, I returned to the slides at the Tate much sooner than I had expected. Perhaps had I pursued our schedule more carefully it wouldn't have been as unexpected. Yesterday morning, our group went to the Tate modern to meet with Stuart Comer the curator for film at the Tate and a Carleton graduate. It happened to be the first day of the slide exhibit, “Test Site” by Carsten Holler. Fittingly the first two people I saw try the slides were a small girl with pigtails and a balding overweight man. They came down almost simultaneously and she was making this incredible shrill noise, while he guffawed and his slide rattled and banged. It was fitting really. The slides seemed to protest a bit when they bore more than 100lb. It was like a subtle reminder that adults can't really go back and enjoy innocent pleasures without a hitch- sort of like a teenager laughing at a man with a convertible and a mid-life crisis. But maybe I just read too much into an unsteady slide.
The debate here seems to been raging more on the “art” of the slides. Holler said "Going down can be like being under the influence of a drug, a thrilling experience, but it is also a fast and efficient way of getting from A to B. It's a playground for the body and the brain. It's art and it's not art." Jessica Morgan, curator of the Tate, said the work was about the artist's use of space, modern architecture- the way we move in and around buildings and the experience of sliding. While critic Charles Thomson commented that "Slides are not art. All [Tate director] Sir Nicholas Serota needs to do is to get rid of the few bits of art the Tate does possess. Then he could turn the whole of Tate Modern into a theme park."
It seems like in the post-modern age of art it's a bit unfair to say the slides are devoid of any artistic merit. Earlier in the week, the group discussed the absence of art that we've been seeing in galleries and modern museums on this trip. By absence of art I mean pieces that deny the viewer pleasure or the satisfaction of complete understanding. Some said they were happy about the swing toward this minimalism because they thought it predicted a swing back to “real art” and the renewed validation of technical skill. That seems a bit naïve considering this supposed swing has been predicted for years. I don't believe we will ever return to a time defined by a “master” style of painting or sculpture. Those expecting a new age of neoclassicism are deluding themselves. What's to motivate an artist to return to that path when it's already been done and done to perfection? Perhaps a renaissance is coming, but it won't be a rehashing of the old.
As for the slides- if exploration of the space in the Turbine room was his goal, I would criticize him for exploring very little of it. The slides are all in a small area and while they are quite vertical most of the space in the hall is untouched. However as an investigation into movement, I appreciated the slides.