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Olafur Eliasson, Your natural denudation inverted, 1999 (installation view)
| Ask the Artists: Olafur Eliasson |
| Question 1: I'm a docent at the Museum. We've had a delightful time watching your sculpture evolve over the winter. Did you intend to have icicles form on the trees? Does it bother you that someone walked on the frozen surface? |
| Thanks,
I knew that the possibility was there for the icicles to form, but I could
not count on it since I was not sure that it would be cold enough. I have
worked with ice and icicles before, and the quality of the phenomena that
ice can create has for me something to do with the process--that it
changes all the time. So thinking about the piece for the Carnegie it was
important to me that I left the possibility open for this and other kinds
of process--related things to happen, and through that support a more
individual experience of the piece.
No walking on the ice does not bother me at all--it might not be totally safe--but actually walking on it is just another way of experiencing the piece. The fact that the piece plays on the experience of it through the window, rather than being outside, is a comment on how we are used to experience through filters, and how seemingly normal it occurs to look at this kind of water and steam garden through a window as if it was a picture we looked at through a glass frame. The fact that somebody might walk on the ice--or in the water for that matter--clashes with the looking through the windows, and suddenly the windows become a border between inside and outside rather than a large movie screen. |
| Question 2: Did you create this work only to be shown at the Carnegie Museum of Art, or could it be installed elsewhere? |
| Yes, I did this specially for the courtyard of the Carnegie, and installing it elsewhere is possible but then it is an other piece for me. I anyway believe that it is another piece for every day that passes and for every person that sees it. Since I am interested in the experience and questions that the piece evokes, the actual piece as such becomes more like a machine creating the phenomena that I want it to create. So you could say the work is actually not so much the piece in the courtyard but just as much the people looking at it, and maybe most of all what happens between the person looking at it and the so-called "machine". So installing it elsewhere would never be the same situation and therefore never the same piece. |
| Question 3: Your work is very inviting-did you ever consider allowing visitors to physically interact with Your natural denudation inverted? What inspired the title? |
| I
mentioned this in the first answer (1) so yes interacting is as always
something that I think about. Which is why I have kept the water surface
accessible from outside if somebody wanted to touch it or so.
The title came from thinking about what is it that I am actually doing - and for me it was something about simulating some sort of geothermal activity - like a hot spring or so. I came across the word "denudation" looking for how we measure the tectonic shifting or movement (growth) of mountains and the word denudation seemed to be what geologically is referred to when it comes to the minor changes of mountains that occur from tectonic activity. So playing with that meaning of "denudation," I just made it very simple and said that geothermal activity is where the tectonic plates of the globe are meeting--I liked that thinking about the curatorial ideas of the show--and since my "hot spring" is artificially made I say natural denudation inverted--meaning unnatural denudation--and then finally I wanted to stress that the inverted is an idea only exists inside the spectator’s mind and therefore I decided to say "Your natural denudation inverted." Pointing out that "your" experience is central rather than my ideas about it. |
| Question 4: Why did you choose to incorporate the geyser-like steam in your work? |
| The steam was one of many ideas I considered and through a lot of thinking, talking to the excellent technical staff of the show, and the curator I slowly developed the idea of trying to take some element already existing in the house and exposing it. The fact that the museum is steam heated was interesting. Knowing that in Iceland houses are heated with the energy derived from hot springs, I thought it could be interesting commenting on the idea of what a museum is and reversing the situation and creating a hot spring from the heating of the house. That was simmering in my mind until I saw the great steam columns behind the museum and I thought that if I could take that very same steam and make an artificial hot spring situation I had a good base for an idea to develop further. And like I said the crew greatly managed a way of hooking up a pipe to the heating system of the museum, and if you look closely at the piece you can see a large pipe coming out over a wall running to my piece. This way I could use the geyser as a simulated natural phenomena merely made from cultivated museum steam and therefore questions of relations between culture and nature--which interests me personally as my model for researching how we relate to our surroundings. |
| Question 5: Did you consider the smokestacks near the museum that one can see while viewing your piece? |
| Like I mention in answering question (4) the smokestacks where crucial for the development of the idea for the piece, and yes I am very happy that you can see the smokestacks far away when looking at the piece from inside. It is important for me to see the origin of the work--not to hide anything or to try turning it into magic. That way people when seeing the smokestacks might make the connection that the piece is made from the heating system of the museum. |
| Olafur Eliasson's CI:99/00 page |