In 2005, hikers trekking through the Piedmont region of Northern Italy stumbled upon something that looked like it had glitched out of a cartoon and landed on a mountain. This was “Hase”, a 200-foot-long, 20-foot-thick pink rabbit created by the Viennese art collective Gelitin. The “story” isn’t just that it was big; it’s that it was designed to be a living, dying organism. The artists spent five years coordinating with local Italian grandmothers to hand-knit the entire exterior out of pink wool, filling the inside with tons of straw. They didn’t want a statue you just looked at; they wanted a giant you could “infest.” Visitors were encouraged to climb its massive, noodle-like limbs—which bear an uncanny resemblance to Jax from The Amazing Digital Circus—and fall asleep on its soft, knitted belly.
The “dangerous reason” the video hints at is the art of biodegradation. The artists didn’t want the bunny to last forever; they wanted it to be “eaten” by the mountain. They described the experience as feeling like a tiny parasite crawling over a massive, fallen creature. Because it was made of wool and straw, nature took its course immediately. Over the decades, the vibrant “Jax-pink” faded to a sickly grey, the straw began to rot, and the local wildlife began to nest inside its “wounds.” By 2016, the bunny had almost completely decomposed, leaving behind a dark, flattened silhouette on the grass—a “crime scene” of a cartoon giant that finally became part of the soil. It serves as a surreal reminder that even the biggest, brightest things eventually get swallowed by time.
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#GiantPinkBunny #Hase #Gelitin #AmazingCircus #JaxTADC #TheAmazingDigitalCircus #ItalyExploration #abandonedplaces #SurrealArt #CollettoFava #artinstallations #jax
2 Comments
“oh no! i left my stuffed bunny in the middle of the field mom”
Poor Jax