Stories that matter

Julijonas Urbonas Designs For Art, Not For Practicality

Gallery by Sayre Quevedo on August 26, 2011

Photo by: Dualhead

Julijonas Urbonas calls himself a “Social Fictioner”, which he defines as someone whose work, “challenges the status quo of the social reality and is in a way fictional, that is, [it] belongs to some alternative social reality.” His collection of work includes a vomit simulator, a door that emits sounds like whistling or a ringing cellphone when opened, a miniature earthquake generator, and a roller coaster designed to kill you.

Urbonas aims to challenge what differentiates a scientist from an artist, or a philosopher from an engineer. And his work seems to respond, “nothing.”

Urbonas has managed to seamlessly connect his day-job and his passion, feeding his job with his art and vice versa. “To survive, artists here often seek for an extra source, whether [it’s a] well-paid part-time job in whatever area, or possible commercialization of the artwork etc,” he said. Urbonas’ day job is no less quirky than his art: he’s a researcher and developer for amusement parks.

Urbonas actually spent his childhood in an amusement park called the Klaipeda Park of Culture and Recreation — which was owned and run by his father — located in Soviet Lithuania. The park, he said, was like his kindergarten, and its employees were like his nannies. And though he never rode the rides — even after inheriting his father’s position as CEO of the park — his fascination with the psychological, symbolic, ideological, and bodily affects they had on their visitors only grew. “I felt something extremely powerful was lurking in the park. I found that this sort of surrogate reality provided a variety of aesthetic kinetic bodily-perceived experiences that was unparalleled by any other existing place, except for, perhaps, astronaut training camps,” he said.

He believes a theme park is the only place that can fill you with feelings of magic, nausea, fear, and excitement all at the same time.

One of Urbonas’ pieces of work that is widely circulated on the internet is a Euthanasia Roller Coaster — a hypothetical ride that twist and turns at g-force speeds until the riders — in the most graceful and euphoric manner — die. The coaster, which is an example of what Urbonas calls “Gravitation Theater,” explores the ways in which design and physics converge, the way they affect us and in this case, kill us.

Despite the fact that his work might illicit horrified reactions, Urbonas said there is no misinterpretation when it comes to his work, because he leaves it up to the audience to decide what something like a killer coaster means to them. “It could be seen a work of both of art, design, engineering, philosophy, even physiology. It is also quite ambivalent: it could be as much serious as absurd. For example, one interprets it as a black humour, sci-fi design, whereas another sees it as a tangible object for critical debate about euthanasia.”

Urbonas’ says, his continued work with amusement park research and development has kept his mind stimulated and his work fresh. “In my case I keep my left leg in amusement park R&D business, and my right leg in art/design world. Luckily, those two practices (or legs) have something to share—the former feeds the latter not only financially but also conceptually and empirically.” So, all in all Urbonas has managed to do what for many artists feels impossible—intermesh his work and his art, and on top of that, have some fun with it too.

Check out the gallery, featuring pictures of Julijonas Urbonas’ projects by Dualhead below: