Slow Rotations – Carsten Höller in Conversation

How did your carousel works come about, one of which will be shown this winter in St. Moritz?
There are two ways to answer that. On the one hand, I’m interested in the idea of the carousel as an amusement device. 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 was not originally an amusement device but a military one. In the Middle Ages, knights trained with rotating figures that they would charge at with their lances. That is why carousels in Europe usually turn counterclockwise. The knight was usually right-handed and approached from the left. When the carousel came to America, the direction changed. The Americans made it rotate clockwise. I’m fascinated by this mirroring, this almost chemical principle, like isotopes: the same form, slightly mirrored, a different reaction. Perhaps it also shapes how we perceive movement and pleasure.

I’m also interested in the question of pleasure itself. Philosophers tend to avoid it because it seems trivial. Apart from Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, there’s hardly any serious discussion of it. We are constantly in search of it, usually unnecessarily so. Maybe it’s a kind of cultivated ailment, or a longing that still manages to surprise us.

The Kulm Hotel describes itself as an “Alpine Playground.” Your carousel seems to fit that description rather well?
St. Moritz and the Kulm are perfect for the pink, mirrored carousel. The place holds both: elevation and irony. You’re among people who like to present themselves, Ferraris, elegance, performance. My carousel reflects that, literally and metaphorically. You show yourself on it, you are seen, and the slowness disrupts the usual reflex of amusement. You sit there and become part of this staging, but in a different way. I’m intrigued by the fact that it’s not a museum piece but placed in a semi-public setting, between the hotel, the ice rink and the passing gaze of guests, locals, and tourists. Something else happens there, a different kind of encounter.

Your works feel accessible, almost democratic.
Accessibility is important. I like making things that can be approached in different ways. You don’t need prior knowledge to appreciate them. A child sees a slide and simply wants to use it. Someone familiar with art sees a sculpture that is activated by people. I like when both are true at once, when nothing is excluded. These layered ways of access intrigue me. Perhaps that is, in its way, democratic.

The people give meaning to your work.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder has influenced me a lot, especially his scenes full of people, each doing something different. I imagine St. Moritz in a similar way: people drinking coffee, standing beside their cars, skating. And then there’s the carousel, a point of calm. Everything is in motion, yet somehow still. Together it becomes a living landscape, a scene filled with simultaneous actions.

How do you reflect on your surroundings? And what is your relationship to the mountains?
I live in Stockholm, I’m building something in Italy and I have a house in Ghana. I’m a bit like a bird of passage, the sun in winter, the north in summer. I know the Engadin a little. I used to ski in Valais and one of my artworks can be seen at the Hotel Castell in Zuoz. I see everything as part of one large natural continuum. We, the animals, the landscape, everything is connected. For me there is no antagonism between nature and culture.

Besides your art, you run a restaurant in Stockholm and, with the “Dream Hotel,” have become something of a hotelier. Can you tell me about that?
It came about by chance. A dream researcher wrote to me because he knew my toothpaste project, which was meant to influence dream recall and direction. We then built a dream bed together, hotel room number one, Dreaming of Flying with Flying Fly Agarics. It worked surprisingly well; there was even a scientific paper published about it. Now we’re working on rooms for collective dreaming, where several people dream the same dream. Whether that truly works, we don’t know. But that uncertainty, whether consciousness can be shared, is precisely what makes it fascinating.

The Engadin is known for its mushrooms. Last time I was by the lake, I saw my first fly agaric in the wild.
Really? In Stockholm, they sometimes grow right in the city, under birches or firs. I’m interested in the fly agaric as a form and as a symbol. The carousel has something fungal about it too, the cap, the rotation.

Is steering one’s dreams the ultimate form of luxury? And what does luxury mean to you, especially in the context of St. Moritz?
Dreams are the last truly private thing we have. Once you start steering them, it’s fascinating but also dangerous. It’s the final bastion of freedom, or of manipulation. When it comes to luxury, I’m interested in something other than the usual material sense. In St. Moritz, the word evokes hotels, cars, things that shine. For me, luxury is a state beyond possession. I call it spiritual luxury, the luxury of not having to decide. Maybe that’s the only real luxury we have left. We live in a world that constantly forces us to choose, between A and B, better and worse, more and less. On the carousel, it doesn’t matter where you sit. You turn slowly in a circle, and that equality of all positions is what I consider luxury. Many of my works are “confusion machines.” They create a productive kind of bewilderment. It’s not about chaos but about dissolving hierarchies. You no longer know what’s right or wrong, and that feels liberating. Our culture is built on control and comparison. We want to measure, predict, evaluate everything. But there is a certain luxury in refusing to do so, in allowing uncertainty without fear of it. That’s a mental, even spiritual luxury, a luxury of openness that excludes nothing but allows everything. I believe there’s also a form of consolation in that, something rare in today’s world. In a place like St. Moritz, where everything revolves around perfection, efficiency, and visibility, the carousel creates a counterbalance. It turns gently, it’s pink and mirrored, it cannot be accelerated. And in that lies its question: By what do we measure value? Perhaps the true luxury is not having to measure anything at all.

Earlier you mentioned the art-history reference. What role does the carousel play in the Engadin’s ecosystem?
On one level, it’s about display. You sit on it, you’re seen, and you mirror yourself. The object reflects itself and the people around it. It reflects itself, but without excess. On another level, it’s about time. We want to set the carousel like a clock. My first carousel took twenty-four hours to complete a rotation. The movement was invisible, only the shadow revealed it. In St. Moritz we’ll fine-tune the rotation, somewhere between ten minutes and an hour per turn. We’ll adjust it on site. I like that precision, almost like a clock; it feels right, here in Switzerland. Perhaps because precision itself is part of what defines this place.

Why do you keep returning to the carousel as a motif?
Because it contains so much: child’s play, time machine, sculpture. And because it raises the question of pleasure. It’s a dysfunctional carousel, a place of not-knowing. Time, consciousness, life, these are areas we don’t really grasp. That’s why art is interesting. It can ask questions without knowing the answers, and that’s precisely its appeal.

What role does sound play?
Arman Naféei is creating the sound for the entire forecourt. I’m interested in the idea that the carousel itself becomes a sounding body. We’re placing speakers behind the mirrors so that the carousel becomes its own loudspeaker. It hums, vibrates, resonates.

The carousel stands on the ice rink, with views in all directions.
Exactly. And it’s made up of twelve identical elements. Differences arise only through the people who sit on it, through clothing, posture, gesture. The work itself is neutral. You see a lot, and you are seen. That’s part of it: view and exposure, both at once. The mirrors multiply the gazes; you see yourself, see others, and become part of their reflection.