Olafur Eliasson in "Berlin" - Season 9 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

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

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

You are somehow provoked 
into a more negotiating role,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That created a lot of artistic activity.

I was so impressed with the artists,

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

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

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

I would typically spend more 
time in the countryside.

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

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

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

That's why I brought in working with ephemera,

working with water, working 
with temperature, and so on.

It was not really about 
romanticizing nature versus culture.

It was just that these were the things I knew.

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

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

It was about creating this sense of presence,

in which you are welcome,

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

Creating that moment in it's own surreal way.

Nature presented a great toolbox,

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

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

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

Artists are incredibly interconnected in different networks.

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

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

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

Two years later, we were twenty,

then continuously more people arrived.

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

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

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

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

one is a research team, and 
one is a team of architects.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sadly, it happens a lot.

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

why are we doing what we're doing.

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

about what artworks do in museums,

and what museums do to artworks.

He wanted to test art in public space.

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

Sebastian Behmann: My entering 
into the studio offered Olafur

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

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

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

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

It's the potential of a shape or space.

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

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

rather than only the connection between two sides.

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

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

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

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

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

Take “Ice Watch” for instance.

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

to coincide with the publication 
of the fifth climate report.

Then again in 2015 in Paris.

We wanted to 
talk about climate change, and we thought,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

could be an advocacy tool for renewable energy,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To also go beyond art.

Eliasson: What we are 
interested in when making art,

is to examine the organization of the world.

Art doesn't stop where the real world starts.

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

just like science has presented solutions to us.

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