Olafur Eliasson: Accountable to the future

“Art is not the object, but what the object does to the world,” Olafur Eliasson reflects. Using elemental forms—light and water, colour and movement—the Danish-Icelandic artist brings perceptual systems into sharp relief. Though Eliasson’s work spans many forms, he is best known for large-scale installations like the artificial sun shrouded in mist that transformed the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall (The weather project, 2003), a series of glacial slabs of ice left to slowly melt in city squares during climate summits (Ice Watch, 2014-18), and monumental man-made waterfalls installed everywhere from the Palace of Versailles (Waterfall, 2016) to the base of the Brooklyn Bridge (The New York City Waterfalls, 2008).

Eliasson relocated to Germany from Denmark in 1995. In a sprawling building that once housed a Berlin brewery, he established Studio Olafur Eliassion: a transdisciplinary space where projects are imagined and brought to life by a team of architects, philosophers, researchers, historians, technicians, cooks, and craftspeople. On the occasion of the studio’s 30th anniversary, we sat down with Eliasson to discuss art as language, the courage it takes to connect, and the necessity of reorienting ourselves away from consumption and towards cooperation and communication.

hube: In your creative practice, you use two tools: science and art. Which do you think has a greater influence on the shape of our ethics?

Olafur Eliasson: The topic of ethics to me sparks questions such as “what are human rights and what are the rights of non-humans?” I see ethics as the shadow of our values—one fol- lows another. Sometimes, I think ethics are perceived as something that is solid and non-negotiable. I would say science has had a greater influence on shaping ethics than art. Art is inherently subjective—there is no requirement for “truth.” Science, with its foundation in evidence and fact, perhaps plays a more direct role in shaping how we define ethics.

I think back to Lynn Margulis theory that symbiosis—that is, cooperation—plays a fundamental role in evolution. When she first wrote about it in the 1960s, it was met with suspicion, because scientists generally favoured Darwinian theories of evolution based on competition and survival of the fittest. Somehow, the Darwinian theory speaks to something that is intrinsic to the competitive capitalist societies of today.

h: Sensory experience is fundamental to human development, but language remains one of our most important means of communication. In your work, are words insufficient, or are they simply unnecessary?

OE: The way that I see it, art is a language. You can say things with it through the body and mind, time and dimensions—all in one soup. Art communicates the allure of existence, the lightheartedness of being present, and the gravity of feeling alive all at the same time.

And in that way, art has a tremendous potential to move people, depending on where you put it. Having said that, art can of course also do the opposite. You can lift people with it and invite viewers to make up their own minds, or, at worst, you can utilise the messaging to suit your own political agenda.

h: There is a natural conflict between a person’s inner world and the shared world of society. Your work explores the relationship between individual and collective experience, which aspect interests you more?

OE: I don’t think of inner space and commonality as polar opposites. Perhaps one’s inner space is also a co-producer of the outer social environment, just like an instrument in an orchestra. I’m very interested in the courage that it takes to lower your defenses in order to sensorially and emotionally connect with yourself and others in this oversaturated and overstimulated reality. I think that when we find the courage and confidence to lean out of our comfort zones, we discover new ways in which we can partake in the world, and move away from being passive consumers.

To do this, I believe we need to question to what extent we are able to be honest to ourselves and others. And we also need to question how our environments make us feel: do we have spaces which allow us to be our authentic, vulnerable selves? I am not sure I have the answers yet, but I do believe that if we can deconstruct predefined notions of reality, we are able to see more clearly the ways in which social masking is having an effect on our wellbeing.

h: By inviting the viewer of your work into a dialogue about ideas and values, are you, in a way, making them a co-author of it?

OE: As an artist, I believe in the value of inviting viewers to bring their own associations to my artworks. That experience—their views, opinions, or takeaways—is in their hands. Putting an artwork out in the world is a bit like looking at the ripples that span out from a rock as it hits the water. The dialogue is based on the ripple that each artwork creates.

h: Whether exhibited in a museum or gallery, a city square or in nature, art is inevitably tied to its context. How do you see the relationship between your work and time?

OE: Time is crucial in how visitors encounter and co-produce artworks. Even in relation to a single still photograph, for example, our experience of the work unfolds over time. In the art gallery, visitors co-create their experiences as they wander, embodied, from artwork to artwork.

Of course, our bodies play a role not only in producing and perceiving space, we also use them to understand and create knowledge. We choose histories. We produce them. Sometimes, this gets lost and ends up looking like a solid, non-negotiable fact instead. But histories do not exist independently, they have roots in particular perspectives. Each sculpture that we encounter in public space, for instance, represents not the past but past ideals.

This has led me to consider how we might destabilise the apparent solidity of our built environment. I recently explored this idea in my public artwork Lifeworld, which was displayed on advertising screens in densely populated urban areas, such as Piccadilly Circus in London and Times Square in New York. My team and I began by filming the immediate surroundings of each location, and then we applied a spatial and temporal blur that both slowed and softened the images of the architecture and the vehicles and the people moving through the public spaces. Lifeworld aimed to relax our usual perceptions of depth and time, allowing the familiar to be seen anew. In this way, both the artwork and the spaces it inhabited become open to interpretation.