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Claire Denis and Olafur Eliasson during the filming of Contact

Contact – A film by Claire Denis

Contact - a film by Claire Denis. In 2014, Olafur and filmmaker Claire Denis met to discuss their common fascination with phenomena that have not yet been fully explained by science – such as black holes – and their shared interest in abstraction; this short film by Denis, contemplating tests for Eliasson's work ‘Contact’, 2014, is one outcome of that conversation. Watch the full film on www.soe.tv

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Love sphere, 2018. ‘I like the idea of using art and culture to generate awareness and support for people to get healthy. There are amazing stories of what happens through access to life-saving anti-retroviral medication, but the fight is only at the halfway point. This is a dangerous time because people think AIDS isn't a threat anymore. We have to keep the pressure on and get new generations involved at home if we’re going to put an end to AIDS once and for all’, says artist Theaster Gates, who, together with Sir David Adjaye, has collaborated with musician and activist Bono to curate the third (RED) Auction to support the fight against AIDS. Centred on the theme of light and the colour red, the collection of contemporary art and design will be auctioned by Sotheby’s during Art Basel Miami Beach and Design Miami on the evening of 5 December 2018 – including global bidding that will be available live online and by phone. The auction will be preceded by a public exhibition presented by Gagosian at the famed Moore Building, which will open 1 December. Olafur has donated his work ‘Love sphere’ to be auctioned at the event. To date, (RED) has generated more than $500 million for the Global Fund to support lifesaving HIV/AIDS programs in Africa. Proceeds from this year’s auction will continue to support community-based programs in Africa through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, while also providing assistance to the HIV fight through community-strengthening programmes in Chicago with the Rebuild Foundation – an organisation championed by Theaster Gates. Lear more here: red.org

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Ragnar Axelsson - Glacier, 2018

Olafur on Glacier - a new book by Ragnar Axelsson: 'There is a strange human longing for untouched nature. This is neither new nor exceptional, it’s a mode of reflecting on oneself in relation to ‘the other’, to ‘the big beyond’, a longing out of which ideals and utopias are constructed. Ragnar Axelsson, however, eschews utopias, taking another route. He has a calm, analytical gaze. The extraordinary photographs presented in this volume bring that which is otherwise invisible to our eyes and minds, into the realm of the visible. Axelsson’s almost scientific approach – which also embraces the immaterial and the atmospheric – brings these Icelandic landscapes to our attention, makes them felt. Axelsson is clearly comfortable with the abstract and with the patterns that physical landscapes create. He embraces the commingling of abstraction and beauty head-on, yet his pictures are always present, accessible, there for you. They are open, ready to meet up. The artist stays in the background, a facilitator of encounters between the landscape and your own way of seeing. Nature becomes landscape the moment it touches a person: you, the viewer. You – never an eye only, but a vibrant composite of ongoing perceptual and cerebral activities interlinking, framing, and shaping each other. You look, supported by your body – a biological entity – and by your cultural framework, your worldview, your everyday with its little challenges, big challenges, and moments of hesitation and of joy. In your encounter with the landscape it is changed and it changes you.'

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The new Little Sun Black Diamond - a special edition available from 1 November until Christmas. For every lamp sold as part of this campaign, two solar lamps will go to people in an area without reliable access to energy.

Dubbed ‘The Big Book of Everything’ by the studio during its multi-year development, Experience – published by Phaidon earlier this week – distills almost three decades of Olafur’s experiments into 440 pages. The monograph gives a chronological overview of his installations, large-scale sculpture, architectural projects, and interventions in urban space while also featuring smaller, more delicate artworks, including paintings and drawings, photographs, and glass works.

Premiering on 25 November at Staatsoper, Berlin: Hippolyte et Aricie, by French baroque composer Jean-Phillipe Rameau, for which Olafur created sets, costumes, and overall lighting concept.

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When our governments fail to protect our planet, it’s time to take action ourselves, to become aware of local initiatives and ways to get involved. In light of this past weekend’s election of Jair Bolsonaro as the new president of Brazil, we want to take some time to consider its imminent impact on the global climate crisis and options for moving forward. Brazil was an early leader of international climate protection initiatives back in the 1990s. With a population of over 200 million today, it is vital that Brazil stay committed to curbing carbon emissions and deforestation. Brazil is also home to 60% of the Amazon rainforest, known as the lungs of the earth. Bolsonaro has been vocal about his admiration for US president Trump’s decision to leave the Paris climate accord, as well as about abolishing Brazil’s environment ministry and opening up protected rainforest areas to industry. Indigenous communities in Brazil are also under grave threat from this seismic political shift. When governments fail we can put our resources into organisations advocating for environmental protections in Brazil, by contributing our time, money, and/or voices. For a map of local organisations working to make Brazil carbon neutral and save its rainforest, visit: 350.org Another important resource is Amazon Watch - an NGO founded in 1996 to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. They partner with indigenous and environmental organisations in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability, and the preservation of the Amazon's ecological systems. Amazon Watch’s work is focused on three main priorities: to stop Amazon destruction, to advance indigenous solutions, and to support climate justice. Visit amazonwatch.org - there are many ways in which you could get involved!

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Reality oscillator, 2018
via Instagram

The new planet, 2014

The new planet, 2014

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Studio Other Spaces (SOS) is an office for art and architecture founded by artist Olafur Eliasson and architect Sebastian Behmann. In 2011, Eliasson and Behmann proposed an extension - based on the figure of the oloid - of the Berlin Philharmonie to complement and connect to Hans Scharoun’s Philharmonie and the Kammermusiksaal.

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Image used on Blog post '1679' (from S3)
Homage to P. Schatz, 2012

Homage to P. Schatz, 2012. The shape of this luminous sculpture derives from the oloid, a three-dimensional figure discovered by the scientist and mathematician Paul Schatz. The oloid’s form is conceived around two congruent circles, placed perpendicular to one another and with the centre of each intersected by the circumference of the other. Homage to P. Schatz references this geometrical discovery but exaggerates the form by elongating it, as if the work were pushing itself apart from within. A translucent skin that refracts light into its spectral colours adds another layer of visual ambiguit

Studio Visits: Michelle Kuo (excerpt)

Curator and art historian Michelle Kuo visited the studio in January 2018, sharing her research and why she is interested in how contemporary artists explore new systems for thinking about the future. Her extensive essay on Olafur introduces our new book; Experience. You can watch the full interview on SOE.TV

The weather project, 2003

Today marks the 15th anniversary of The weather project at Tate Modern, London

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Experience (2018) – Published by Phaidon

Experience – published by Phaidon yesterday

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Olafur Eliasson – Experience (2018)

We're very excited to share with you our new book - Experience, published by Phaidon today. You can order your copy here. Olafur will be in London talking about the book and his practice in general on 26 October at The Southbank Centre, as a part of London Literature Festival.

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An Orchestra of Forces

On the surface of the earth, in a midsize European metropolis, stands a red-brick industrial building – an artist’s studio. Its concrete foundations hold ercely on to the planet, just as the planet holds fiercely on to the studio. Inside, on the ground floor, a stone table supports the weight of a sheet of paper; it feels the weight where the rough-hewn surface makes contact with the page.
The stone has been around for hundreds of years. The paper, much younger, enjoys the cold, solid support, aware that the oor and foundations beneath the table were built upon the very same earth from which the paper, as a sapling, once grew. The paper is mindful of its scarcity as a resource. It is about to engage with a pencil. The pencil gets together with its companion, the hand. It is a listening hand, in uid motion. The movements conjure a hand dance of pushing and being pushed. Sometimes the pencil leads, sometimes the hand. There’s some friction in the interaction.
The weight of the hand and of the pencil travels to the paper, onwards to the table, and further down to the foundations of the building and to the planet. The pencil is conscious of its ability to push the planet.
As the pencil pushes, the planet pushes back. The table readily hosts the downward and upward forces, negotiating. The meeting-up of trajectories gives rise to the drawing. As much as the relationship is vertical at rst glance, there are also sideways connections, and spinning and orbital activity. The drawing is drawing upon and travelling in various dimensions. At this moment, the pencil is catching up with an idea that has come from the future, but has not yet been scribbled down. Time is its companion. The listening hand enjoys the apparently abstract agenda of the pencil; it accepts the unspeakable openness of things. It is too soon, at this point in time, to introduce a subject.
Contribution to Hyperobjects for Artists - a reader, edited by Timothy Morton and Laura Copelin with Peyton Gardner

Retinal flare space - Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles – 2018 - Photo: Jeff Mclane

The speed of your attention, Tanya Bondakdar Gallery, Los Angeles
Photos by Jeff McLane

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SOE KITCHEN 101 - a temporary culinary project in Reykjavik - is open until the end of the month. Check out the events programme, workshops, and menues, and book a seat at the long table on the project site.

1 m3 light, 1999 - MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York, 2008 - Photo: Studio Olafur Eliasson

1m3 light, 1999. How does one visualise the ephemeral? How does one measure the non-visible? My son recently asked me whether he had saved much CO2 from being emitted into the air by using the Little Sun solar lamp I designed. He also wanted to know why, if a tonne of CO2 weighs so much, it does not drop to the ground. And where is it? To him, a tonne is heavy and physical and not an intangible mass distributed in the atmosphere. His questions made me realise how little I myself know about CO2. When I was my son’s age, back in the late seventies, there was no discussion of climate change. Nature was where I spent my summers, in a tent in the Icelandic highlands, a stark contrast to the Copenhagen I lived in. These natural and manmade realms could not be more separate. But today, there is no nature outside of human activity. Our survival and future depend on understanding the effects of CO2 consumption and acting on that understanding.

But what do we understand? What, for instance, is a tonne of CO2? Is it hot or cold, wet or dry? Perhaps it would help to know that one tonne of CO2 could be imagined as a cube the size of a three-storey house, or that, when frozen, it would form a block of dry ice about 0.67 cubic meters in size. But what does that actually tell me if I do not know how much CO2 I produce in a year or on an average day? What does it tell me if I do not sense my interrelationship with planet Earth?

We need science to tell us that the weight of CO2 is based on the atomic mass of the molecules. A scientist can tell me that a tonne of CO2 is equal to the energy expenditure of a house for about a month, a small car driven for two days non-stop, or a 747 flying for less than two minutes; and that because of the greenhouse effect, excessive amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere lead to global warming.

But, for many people, science alone is not enough to compel action. It struck me, when I was looking up this data, that it was familiar, that I had seen it more than once in the media, and I somehow knew most of it. So I asked myself why does knowing not translate into doing when so much is at stake?

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