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Olafur Eliasson: The objects are not necessarily the [br]most interesting part about art.

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It is what the object does to me when I look at [br]it, or engage in it, that is actually interesting.

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You are somehow provoked [br]into a more negotiating role,

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because you go like, "What am I looking at?"

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Then you are more likely to also inquire, [br]"Well what does looking actually mean,

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and why am I seeing things the way I'm seeing it?"

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Instead of questioning the object, [br]you are in fact questioning yourself.

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That I think is one of the [br]great things art can do.

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Art can somehow offer an opportunity, [br]to sort of, do some self-evaluation.

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When I came to Berlin in the early 90's, the [br]art scene, it was still relatively small.

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It was cheap, easy to get a [br]studio, easy to meet friends.

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That created a lot of artistic activity.

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I was so impressed with the artists,

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but I also realized I had to be as honest [br]they were to themself, I had to be to myself.

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That's why I said I'll just deal with [br]the tools that I have, and what I know.

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I grew up in Denmark, and I spent a lot of [br]time in Iceland, where my parents are from.

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I would typically spend more [br]time in the countryside.

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I would just climb, and make small [br]dams in the rivers and so on ...

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It's not about me growing [br]up in a certain situation.

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It's really about you and what you can make of it.

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That's why I brought in working with ephemera,

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working with water, working [br]with temperature, and so on.

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It was not really about [br]romanticizing nature versus culture.

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It was just that these were the things I knew.

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I thought that a waterfall would offer a [br]dimensional quality to these enormous spaces,

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which would allow us to physically [br]relate to the city on a more human scale.

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It was about creating this sense of presence,

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in which you are welcome,

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and you could share it looking with [br]somebody else, and you know ...

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Creating that moment in it's own surreal way.

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Nature presented a great toolbox,

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which would offer a lot of spatial experiments [br]through which we could investigate each other.

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A lot of people still think that artists work in this [br]kind of solitary position.

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And I actually don’t think that’s the case.

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Artists are incredibly interconnected in different networks.

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When I started my studio in Berlin, [br]for many years I did everything myself.

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I was lucky to realize that other [br]people are probably better at it.

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Caroline Eggel: When I started [br]in 2000, we were 3 people.

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Two years later, we were twenty,

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then continuously more people arrived.

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Eliasson: I really didn't want to get [br]specialized in a form, but more in content.

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The ambition was to prevent [br]us only working in one thing.

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For some 5, 6, 7, 8 years now, [br]we've been around ninety people.

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Broadly speaking, there's 3 teams [br]in the studio, one is craftsman,

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one is a research team, and [br]one is a team of architects.

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The fact that they would feel that it's worth [br]being a part of the team is incredibly inspiring.

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Eggel: It's always a collaborative [br]moment. No one here does anything alone.

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When starting a project together, we [br]think about what does he want to say,

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or what is important to say in [br]these days, or at this moment?

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Eliasson: I've always been interested in, how [br]does one know that one is in a public space?

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Like the “Weather Project” ... I wanted to see,

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can I create a work of art [br]both inside and the outside?

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We play around a lot, and we do a lot [br]of things that are non-quantifiable.

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We experiment with artworks that [br]eventually does not turn into an artwork,

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because it turns out to be a lot less [br]interesting than I thought it would be.

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Sadly, it happens a lot.

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One of the important things, is that everybody [br]seems to have some kind of feeling of,

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why are we doing what we're doing.

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Anna Engberg-Pedersen: So ten years [br]ago, he'd be very focused in thinking

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about what artworks do in museums,

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and what museums do to artworks.

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He wanted to test art in public space.

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What does art do when you encounter [br]it in an un-prescribed way?

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Sebastian Behmann: My entering [br]into the studio offered Olafur

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the possibility to actually work in [br]public space, in a more significant way.

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The boring thing to me about art is if it's [br]only made for people who look at art anyway.

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He has strong opinions, but he's also very [br]open about how his thoughts get expressed.

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Not necessarily about that he likes this or that, [br]but it's about the potential of the material.

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It's the potential of a shape or space.

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We consider the bridge more as an [br]artwork than an architectural work.

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The idea behind the bridge is that [br]you actually generate a space,

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rather than only the connection between two sides.

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We want to have a design [br]which is a lot more playful.

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The idea of crossing from one side to the [br]other, kind of jumping over little islands.

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Engberg-Pedersen: Most anyone among us, has experienced the power

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that an artwork has to create [br]some type of interior change.

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Something that motivates us ... makes us [br]go, "Wow, this made me think differently."

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Take “Ice Watch” for instance.

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We brought these twelve blocks of [br]Greenlandic ice to Copenhagen in 2014,

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to coincide with the publication [br]of the fifth climate report.

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Then again in 2015 in Paris.

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We wanted to [br]talk about climate change, and we thought,

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well what art does is that it affords [br]an immediate experience of something.

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What we lack today is an immediate [br]experience of what climate change means.

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Eliasson: I was finding a lot of satisfaction [br]in doing the “Ice Watch” project.

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This gave me confidence to start to operate more [br]on behalf of the cultural center in advocacy.

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Once I met with an engineer, [br]who's sort of a solar nerd.

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I, as an artist, I was interested in, how does [br]it feel to be able to harvest your own energy?

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You know, clearly his skills and [br]my skills must be usable together,

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and this is how we came up [br]with the “Little Sun” project.

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Felix Hallwachs: The idea that we were looking [br]at with “Little Sun,” is could we make something,

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which for us is a work of art [br]but, for someone here in Berlin,

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could be an advocacy tool for renewable energy,

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and for a child in Ethiopia, it could [br]maybe really be a life-changing thing.

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I don't think it's so much [br]a shift in Olafur's work,

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as it is an evolution, an expanding of the tools.

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Eliasson: I often thought about the studio not being a [br]place you step into to get away from the world,

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but a place through which you can have [br]a microscopic look at the world outside.

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On a good day, the studio is [br]almost like an amplifier of,

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this sort of, frequencies on [br]which the world is moving.

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Eggel: The goal was to do [br]something meaningful with art.

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To also go beyond art.

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Eliasson: What we are [br]interested in when making art,

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is to examine the organization of the world.

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Art doesn't stop where the real world starts.

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I really think we need to find [br]a way to create solutions,

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just like science has presented solutions to us.

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Art, as a civic muscle, [br]actually has something to offer.