This video is art, but it's more than that.
It is a compilation of balloon-popping devices of varying complexity in action, all created and operated by Norwegian artist Jan Hakon Erichsen, who regularly posts his escapades on YouTube.
There are drills, axes, knife-crowns, hammer-spikes, blow-pipes, handsaws, and a dizzying array of kitchen knives zip-tied and duct-taped to everyday objects and planks of wood, all employed in the simple and singular goal of violently freeing small amounts of trapped air from their shiny rubber prisons. Erichsen is, as he says simply in his Twitter bio, "here to destroy everything" (and also sometimes to wear spaghetti as a hat).
It is also our collective id crystallised in flying scraps of latex and dangling cutlery, the pure chaotic spirit of invention that leads humans to do weird destructive shit in the most convoluted and/or absurd way possible. It's Will It Blend. It's hydraulic-press videos. It's John Mulaney and his eggs. It's the same energy as when you're seven years old and you know the best way to answer any question that begins with the phrase "What would happen if I X?" is, simply, to X.
Watch repeatedly, soundtracked by Limp Bizkit or X-Ray Spex or whatever your break-stuff music is -- but whatever you do, however stressed you get, do not try any of this at home.
