Olafur Eliasson and the Circulation of Affects and Percepts : In Conversation

• The work of Danish-Icelandic artist, Olafur Eliasson is suffused with an internal atmospheric that profoundly impacts upon the experience of those who apprehend his projects. Through an array of manufactured weather conditions, wild and moody landscapes improbably enter the framed interiors that he creates. Eliasson’s atmospheric works have become increasingly compelling for interior and architectural designers alike as he activates a mobile circulation of affects and percepts creating an intimate relay between the artwork and those who enter into a zone of indiscernibility with the work. Through the manipulation of the colour, transparency, and reflection of light, Eliasson dissolves the material of interior space into the immaterial qualia of atmosphere and captures the fragile visitor in this embrace. Here I hope to go in search of a tentative theory of affect for the artist’s work in order to discover how he has enacted the mutual transformation of space, time and inhabitant. The immaterial materials of atmosphere that Eliasson manipulates move beyond mere surface effect and open up the possibility of new forms of sociality. This brief essay will recount a collective conversation that erupted in the midst of a midsummer forum held at Studio Olafur Eliasson, next to the Hamburger Bahnhof, a reputable museum of contemporary art in Berlin. The leitmotifs of the longest day of the year included temporality, or the inexorable sensation of the passing of time; the status of reality; objecthood, specifically the place of the art-object in contemporary art, but also the medium of the model or maquette; and the perception of colour and light, for example, in the phenomenon of the after-image. The event was named: Life in Space, and was attended by a series of culinary delights that culminated in a BBQ to which all the family was invited.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Filosofi, etik och religion (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Philosophy, Ethics and Religion (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Bildkonst (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Visual Arts (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Arkitektur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Architecture (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Olafur Eliasson

affect

atmosphere

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)