Connecting cross country with a line – A film for ‘Station to Station’

Our relation to space, a curious line

Image used on Blog post '142' (from S3)

Scale is you in relation

Image used on Blog post '141' (from S3)

'During my childhood in Iceland, electricity was rationed because of the oil crisis in the early seventies. As a five-year-old child, I remember a siren in the city sounding very clearly, and suddenly the whole city blacked out at once. It was like a massive work of urban land art. What was more remarkable, though, was that the experience of the sunlight would change. As the sunlight was also visible at night in the summer, albeit faintly, it was as if the daylight had suddenly been turned on. Seen from inside a house, the twilight outside the windows became much more apparent the moment the lights went out. This intensity and beauty of light outside struck me then, and it has influenced me since.'



Adapted from Olafur Eliasson, 'The Rise of Little Sun', blog entry, 19 July 2012

Image used on Blog post '141' (from S3) Image used on Blog post '141' (from S3) Image used on Blog post '141' (from S3) The Domadalur daylight series (north), 2006 - Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, 2006 - Photo: Fabian Birgfeld / PhotoTECTONICS Image used on Blog post '141' (from S3) Image used on Blog post '141' (from S3) Image used on Blog post '141' (from S3)
Image used on Blog post '140' (from S3)

Latest issue of Disegno magazine, featuring Your uncertain archive

The question is if an archive is something retroactive, which, informally or not, tends to suggest an objective view of the past; or if it’s more of a subjective facilitator, which actually nurtures a proactive approach and suggests that is also about writing a narrative that’s more concerned with the future than the past. There is also a general need to find a systematic way to make use of archives, which are collections of knowledge. Instead of archives turning into dust-collecting heaps of knowledge, they can be proactive reality machines.\
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Olafur Eliasson interviewed in Disegno, no. 7, A/W 2014–15

Image used on Blog post '140' (from S3)
Two years of uncertainty

Two years of uncertainty: visualising the entanglements of artworks and ideas for the development of Your uncertain archive

Image used on Blog post '138' (from S3)

Now: Spiegeltunnel, 2009, one of three works on view at Akademie der Künste, Berlin, as part of the group exhibition, Schwindel der Wirklichkeit

Spiegeltunnel, 2009 - Max-Reinhardt-Park, Berlin, 2009 - Photo: Olafur Eliasson Image used on Blog post '138' (from S3) Image used on Blog post '138' (from S3) Image used on Blog post '138' (from S3)
Image used on Blog post '137' (from S3)

The view, a window on the horizon

Image used on Blog post '137' (from S3) Fensterkaleidoskop, 1998 - Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, 1998 - Photo: Hans-Christian Schink Image used on Blog post '137' (from S3) Image used on Blog post '137' (from S3) Image used on Blog post '137' (from S3)
Steen Koerner through Olafur Eliasson's Know-how kaleidoscope, 2014, Kabelparken, Copenhagen

Steen Koerner in Know-how kaleidoscopes, 2014, Kabelparken, Copenhagen

Image used on Blog post '134' (from S3)

Black hole sensitivity

The ellipse is for the human a shape permanently ambiguous. Even when we view an ellipse head-on, our mind wants to interpret its elongated edges and stretched axes as a translation and distortion of a circle through three-dimensional space before us. An ellipse is a reminder that we carry our horizons with us always, that we only ever capture a circle as it slips and stretches toward our personal black hole, the vanishing point of perspective.

Moon sketches

Feature: Natasha Mendonca, Moon Sketches, 2013 - a film inspired by Olafur Eliasson and Ai Weiwei's, Moon

Image used on Blog post '132' (from S3)
Parabolic thinking, 2010 - Studio Olafur Eliasson, 2010 - Photo: Jens Ziehe

(the point) where thinking becomes seeing

Fivefold eye, 2000 - neugerriemschneider, Berlin, 2000 - Photo: Jens Ziehe Sketch for Eye, eye, 2002 Eye, eye, 2002 - Photo: Hans-Christian Schink Eyeball stamp, 2005 Double vision eyeball, 2004 - Photo: Jens Ziehe 2004 The old eye, 1995 - Studio Olafur Eliasson, 2011 – 1995/2011 - Photo: Jens Ziehe Your compound view, 1998 - Reykjavik Art Museum, Kjarvalsstadir, 1998 - Photo: Einar Falur Ingolfsson Your compound view, 1998 - Reykjavik Art Museum, Kjarvalsstadir, 1998 - Photo: Einar Falur Ingolfsson
Sketch for 360° compass, 2009

Bound together by our need to navigate: we're all a bit lost, we're all on the way

Trust compass, 2013 - Photo: Jens Ziehe, 2013 The cubic compass rock, 2007 - Studio Olafur Eliasson, 2007 - Photo: Jens Ziehe Hemisphere compass, 2011 - Photo: Jens Ziehe, 2011 Motional city map, 2010 The movement meter for Lernacken, 2000 - Malmö, Sweden, 2000 - Photo: Jan Engsmar The movement meter for Lernacken, 2000 - Malmö, Sweden, 2011 – 2000 - Photo: Thilo Frank / Studio Olafur Eliasson Empathy compass, 2011 - Photo: Jens Ziehe, 2011 Five orientation lights, 1999 - Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy, 1999 - Photo: Olafur Eliasson Sketch for Five orientation lights, 1999 The lighthouse series, 1999 - The Menil Collection, Houston, 2004 – 1999 - Photo: Oren Slor
Colour experiment no. 60

Now: Turner colour experiments on view at Tate Britain

"I have always been interested in the idea that abstraction can be welcoming; Turner’s palette, which he formulated according to the hues of the natural world, is very recognisable. I was keen to explore this type of abstract matter, which, at the same time, feels familiar. It seemed like a natural step to begin an experimental study by abstracting the prismatic colours of Turner’s palette and filtering them into a new, utopian colour theory. It is within our sense of abstraction that we are able to re-evaluate our sense of presence."



Olafur Eliasson on J. M. W. Turner

Colour experiment no. 59, 2014 - Photo: Jens Ziehe, 2014 Colour experiment no. 61, 2014 - Photo: Jens Ziehe, 2014
Image used on Blog post '126' (from S3)
No nights in summer, no days in winter, 1994 - Forumgalleriet, Malmö, 1994 - Photo: Flemming Brusgaard

Now: No nights in summer, no days in winter, 1994, at the Gwangju Biennale
On view until 9 November

No nights in summer, no days in winter, 1994 - Forumgalleriet, Malmö, 1994 - Photo: Flemming Brusgaard
Image used on Blog post '124' (from S3)

View from the studio: Turner colour experiments in progress

Image used on Blog post '124' (from S3) Image used on Blog post '124' (from S3) Image used on Blog post '124' (from S3)
Inverted campfire series, 2006 - i8, Reykjavik, 2009 – 2006 - Photo: Vigfus Birgisson

Active memory: from the burning archive

Iceland series #73, 2002 Your perfect lovers, 2005 - Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, 2005 Image used on Blog post '123' (from S3)
Image used on Blog post '122' (from S3)
Contact is content, 2014

Preview of Contact is content, 2014, on view as part of Riverbed at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark

Your uncertain archive, 2014

Your uncertain archive!: drift, explore, connect – embrace uncertainty

"I wanted the chance to allow for a higher degree of negotiability, and also that little bit of discomfort in being slightly lost sometimes. Not too lost but lost in the sense of having to work a little harder to find your path.... We're so used to commodified home pages, everything is about predictability, in order to make people feel safe."

Olafur Eliasson on Your uncertain archive.

Image used on Blog post '118' (from S3)
Image used on Blog post '117' (from S3)

Movement microscope, 2011, on view as part of Riverbed, at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark

Movement microscope, a film by Olafur Eliasson, depicts a normal day at Studio Olafur Eliasson, with one major difference: Eliasson invited 'movement specialists' (street performers, mimes, dancers) to come perform a kind of spatio-temporal intervention throughout the studio during the work day.
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Movement microscope is now on view as part of Riverbed, at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, until 4 January, 2015.



Watch the film online here:

Image used on Blog post '117' (from S3) Image used on Blog post '117' (from S3)
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View from the studio

View through Olafur Eliasson's Know-how kaleidoscope, 2014, Kabelparken, Copenhagen

View of Know-how kaleidoscopes, 2014, Kabelparken, Copenhagen
Video: Bo Tengberg

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