Nightmare Playgrounds, Part 2
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"QUANTUM SHOT" #415link
Also read Part 1
Manic-depressive creativity
Granted, some playground sculptures shown here may impress a child with their unapologetic weirdness - but most are so tasteless and ugly that it's bordering on insanity.
A multitude of such bizarre apparitions still exists in the former Communist countries - proving that kids would play in just about any environment. A few statues illustrate the elements of Slavic fairy tales, others make do with miserable (decapitated, or worse) animals and evil-looking, nightmarish characters.
(photo by Olga Shvetz)
Dr. Aibolit (his name loosely translates as "Dr. Ouch!") in Moscow Children Hospital:
(image credit: cherski)
Somebody wrote "cadaver-eating orcs" over this endearing Teletubby character (in Moscow) -
Some heinous crime scene, in a village close to Odessa:
Impaled Baba Yaga, who seems to strangely enjoy the experience:
Decapitated monkeys (their bodies are attached to another attraction) -
Poor puppy, nailed to the tree (Rostov-na-Donu):
What's worse, Little Red Riding Hood, ruthlessly bound (though not gagged) -
One half of hippopotamus:
Cow / baths hybrids, spotted in Eilat, Israel:
These Lovecraft-ian snails invade a playground near St. Petersburg:
In light of all the above, the "mosquito slide", found in Germany, looks positively normal:
(image credit: Valentin Laube)
What do you do when the only available material is some plumbing and pipes lying around? Use them to make a modernist slide (with birds standing guard around it)
(photos by Detsky Dvor)
Playground above is actually quite cool, kudos to the inventive artists. Just as the trapped mouse below is also pretty neat (again Eilat, Israel) -
We'll make an intermission now, while you draw a breath to plunge deeper into a maniacal urban art territory:
Again, the locations of these playgrounds are mostly in Russia and Ukraine:
- St. Petersburg
- Komsomolsk-na-Amure
- Astana, Kazakhstan
- Khmelnitzky, Ukraine
- Lvov, Ukraine
LOTS of imagination required
This is a ship, got it? -
(photo by Katryuk Dvoeglazova)
That thing does NOT rotate:
Get a (never-ending) exercise:
Giant vegetable thing (St. Petersburg) -
Mysterious little monsters in Stary Oskol, Belgorod region:
(photos by NordProd)
At least this little guy is recognizable as "Cheburashka":
This must be a hedgehog:
This lovely lady even got some make-up:
(photo by Aleksis1978)
If it's monsters you seek, then monsters we got!
Here is a stunningly bizarre group of sculptures (supposedly for kids) in the middle of Starokonstantinov. I like this one... can see myself playing there.
(photos by Archiverba)
See more pictures of this "zoo" here
Let's increase the "freaky factor" again... (I wonder if any impressionable parent would "blow a fuse" at this point) -
Certainly a "perfect" sculpture to beautify any kid's playground:
(Kid's playground in Rostov-na-Donu)
And we finish with a stunning rendition of a character that will haunt you for days (just keep looking at it) -
Sources: Detsky Dvor, English Russia, Exler
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26 Comments:
JEEZ..
How will some of them grow up in a few years
kids today really have a short childhood
Thank you! Great article!
#6 looks a lot like Dennis Hopper
"Dr. Aibolit" talks to the animals and is known as "Dr. Dolittle" in the western world.
And we wonder why so many chidlren of today have 'issues' lol. Great post!
Can you say "ethnocentric"? I knew you could...
I may never sleep again. Surely there must be some charity I can contribute to that will put an end to nightmarish playground design.
Man, I would have loved these things as a kid. I still love them today, but sadly I'm a bit too old to go onto playgrounds without people talking and arrests going on.
When I have kids, I shall have to import some of these things for them!
"Cadaver eating orcs" needs to become a world-wide catchphrase.
"Dr. Aibolit" is just a plastic horse somebody's posed and drawn a face on the tail...
"Anonymous said...
"Dr. Aibolit" is just a plastic horse somebody's posed and drawn a face on the tail..."
I think the descriptions are above the pictures. The Dr. Aibolit figure is the one with the red cross on his/her head.
That last one will haunt my dreams. Thanks a lot, jerks! :)
Maybe if American children grew up with stuff like this, they wouldn't turn into whiny, ethnocentric fops with no sense of adventure or creativity who expect everything to be safe.
These are so much more creative than the playgrounds kids in america have today. Every playground looks the same. From the rececycled material padding the bottom of the play area to the bridge, 2 slides (1 going in a corkscrew) the bars to hand on and the tic tac tow in plastic blocking under the platform for the bridge and slide. Did I not just describe every playground from every neighborhood across america. And I live in Hawaii and we got this too. Go Capitalism. Standard playgrounds make standardized brains to take standardized tests.
Thank you anonymous. I totally agree with this. Suburbs are all like this... a bunch of pre-fabricated blocks everywhere.
I think, actually, that this is more related to the norm that existed in child-rearing for hundreds of years. You let your kid know that scary things exist out there, instead of making vague intimations about kidnappers and keeping them in a bubble.
Really, these wouldn't have anything to do with the problems kids have TODAY (speaking as, in America, which is where I assume Andrew is posting from) because kids today AREN'T exposed to this sort of thing.
Have you noticed? Kids' entertainment, the bad guys are getting bland and cuddly (if there are any) and the good guys are the ones to perpetrate the violence, if there is any.
No monsters, in my opinion, means children grow up with unrealistic ideas about how to interact with the world. There ARE monsters, all kinds--poverty, disease, pedophiles, kidnappers, etc. And children aren't being taught to sublimate the existence of these threats on a level they can understand.
Of course these threats SHOULDN'T exist, but as long as we do we're not doing kids a favor by trying to hide the fact that 'scary things can get you' from them. As in abstinence-only sex education, telling someone not to worry about something, they're too young to know about it, is obviously not a viable or intelligent option.
There's my rant. I love these, I grew up in cold-war Europe and saw monsters and went to torture museums as a kid. When I moved to America, it was pretty noticeable how sheltered some of the other kids were. Not necessarily from the sex and violence portrayed in the media, they got plenty of that, but it was untempered by a healthy understanding of the risks they personally ran. It was all an abstraction to them, with no concept of their own placement in it.
Loved seeing Nyarlathotep in riverside installation, the dedication definitely was there,lol.
fantastic!
i love this stuff but the chimp one at the end gives me the fear something chronic.
My gosh, some of this reminds me of haphazard scenes out of Second Life!
» http://lh6.ggpht.com/abramsv/SBuvBido3pI/AAAAAAAAQCk/oGNafsu9QNw/s1600-h/116522017.jpg
^ in particular looks like a melted-down Smurfette.
Really, while the photos are intriguing, I find it far more interesting that there's quite literally no subject that can't be turned into a cynical dig at America and/or capitalism.
Those tame cookie-cutter playgrounds don't exist because some corporate fat-cat is churning them out in a bid to stunt childrens' mental growth. Lawyers survive by encouraging parents to sue those corporations every time little Johnny gets an skinned knee or barked shin from "unsafe" playground equipment.
Those "evil" corporations don't have any choice in the matter if they want to survive.
I happen to think these are beautiful.
Better than Disneyland. Actually, much much better.
The shy-looking red devil/king thing is great. I'd like to have one, although I don't know what I'd do with it...
The vegetable thing looks like a giant turnip to me. I wonder if the leaves are slides?
Also, the ape at the end is REALLY something. Wow.
256 - The "Red Devil" is Kaschei the Immortal from Russian fairy tales - and he's got his life hidden in the needle, in the egg inside the box.
loved this collection---thanks. Wish these sorts of things decorated my local playgrounds!
thanks for collecting those photos, awesome post! we had lots of laughs at these pics.
i also got a nice set on flickr with some scrap metal sculptures from israel, here
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