In 2008 Eliasson and his team harvested driftwood logs from the northern coast of Iceland, where the wood had washed up after a years-long journey from Siberia. The wood is carried by drifting polar ice and bleached by sunlight and saltwater. Eliasson first distributed the logs in public space in Berlin for the urban intervention Berliner Treibholz, 2009, but gradually began incorporating the material into other artworks and exhibitions. The driftwood logs on display in Serralves have been partially coated with black paint and placed outside the museum building in the surrounding park, as if they had been deposited there by the rising ocean.