Olafur Eliasson

The spaces of Eliasson are about ‘people’ and ‘consequences’, he formulates is somewhat bombastic. Everything is about that. You have to provide people with a direct feedback. Rooms have to be performative. ‘Who in our society shows some trajectories of criticality?’, Eliasson continues, ‘There are only very few places in the world that are not affirmative (to the market-place).’ That’s all he gives away. It doesn’t look like we are going to find any of that in the work of architects. They focus too much on the ‘how’, instead of the ‘why’, he complains. Working with museums and architects, Eliasson finds architects by far the most difficult to work with.
Looking into the future, Eliasson sees opportunities for a new kind of practice, that actually looks just like his one: a combination of art and architecture that could attain a ‘new responsive criticality’, working from an engagement with reality. Not socialist, not left wing or right wing, but to provide people with the sense that their lives matters, and that they are part of a community. Social and environmental sustainability. And laughing: ‘Art shows the way’.

THE WEATHER PROJECT