He is the awardwinning, icelandicdanish artist he is the awardwinning, iceOlafur Eliasson. Tist he believes that art can change the world by, for instance, helping to tackle Climate Change. This is one of his exhibits, a giant wall made of moss, and the idea iet people thinking differently about the environment. For instance, could oubuildinge with more sustainable materials. Is this f thinking visionary or just sily farfetched . Olafur erdasson, welcome to halk. Thu, zeinab. You had a fairly unorthodox upbringing. Yoy parents were extremung when they had you your mother 20, you father 19 born in iceland, moved to denmark. Your mother was a seamstress, your father a cook. Hodid your early life influence you and your work . Well, my father moved back to icand, and so i always spent my vacations in iceland, whcking around in nature he was out painting. He also worked as an artist, actually, and my mother, then, in demark would make sure i would go to school, and wer ould say that my motrt of had the more disciplined approach to life, where my father supported a more hedonistic approach, and being in nature over the summer and aying around as a child with my father, that really influenced me a lot, so, to be fair, my mother giving me a sense of purpose, a direction made a great difference for me. You also took part in sort of early artistic experiments with your father on a ship. Yeah. Well, he worked as a cook as well, on a boat and, obviously, i was staying in close contact with him until he passed away some 20 yeart,ago now, we talked ab well, how could we use the ship over the oceelf as a drawing machine . So we would sort of think of these things where we put a b with ink on it on a piece of paper, and what we saw was essentially how the ocean was sort of using the ship as a pen, reversing everything so it s, in fact, a drawing of where my father was, and thene would write down, oh, this is north of norway, at this and this ocean, ano so on, the depth isd so, and all these drawings, we collected them and showed them together. And thda you went to the royash academy of art, studied there, and then you moved to new york, but it wasnt until you moved back to europe from america where you began to start making art seriously. Was that sort of tied up with your identity that you were a europeand you cy work properly when you got back to europe . Yeah. It i was a young artist. I started art school when the berlin wall came down. I was so optimistic, i said, ok. Im done. Why ever stay in art school . L me just go to new yorkand get so it was only when i realized, oh, this is actually a little harder. Be studying art is not so bad, after all, so i went back, and i realized, hmm, maybe being honest to myself, taking this serious, slowing down a bit, id this is sort of whctually started, i say, to get more serious. And you are now a worldrenowned artist and ularly famous for your largescale installations, anre at tate modern in london, there is a retrospective of some of your major works over the last 25 years. One very striking one, the rainbow, what aop you trying to tell there . One of the very early works of mine is a rainbow. Its called beauty. Its drizzling wer on a lamp, and what you see is then the spectral colors, and, of course, if you move a bit, you see, oh oh, it is as if is ilike fire . Is it a rainbow . And its very engaging to look at, and interestingly, the person standing n you or over there, obviously, because a drop of water and a color is depending on your eye, the person sees something else, and its just like it is with rainbows. Itt, like, we are having an experience together, and i think its magnifint. But a rainbows ephemeral, isnt it . I mean, is there a ssage in that . Yeah, but the idea that i have a personal, verycoort of ephemeral, yod say, immaterial experience, so do you standing over there, but its not the sam and still, we are together, so when i did the work, i was very interested. Could we demateria kind of the optic, too . Because art is often is like, ok. Heres a bronze solid on a pedestal. I can work around it, but the artwork is there. Maybe i could suggest, if i dematerialize the artwork,s the rela. It is the evaluation. Am i seng something . What does seeing this mean . Is this real . And therefore, the seeing itself for becomes much more interesting and a sort of a coprodur. You become an artist, as well, i could argue. There are quite a lot of exhibits you have here. Another very striking e is the moss wall. What are you trying to tell viewers there . So i worked a lot with natural phenomena, d natural sort of experiences and how do our senses react to that, and back then when i did the moss wall, it was sort of before the kind of green, vertical gardens, green highrises had showed up, and i ought, i proposed, well, maybe ecology has an answer to architecture. Maybe we should look to nature for a sort of response to how to build buildings, so the all is like, well, why dont we just build with moss . Incase, but, why dont we listen to nature in order to come up with solutions for architectural thgs . And, as we can see in the moss wall, it looks amazing. Are yoously suggesting people, say, could live in a house that is has got walls made of moss . Well, the point is more like, as a moss wall, you know, its more like a proposal to say, instead of, as we know now, a lot of sort of Building Materials are not sustainable, but why dont we seek answers to how are we gonna live in the future if not a moss wall . But then, you know, the proposal is, at least maybecology has things to offer. We just need to find ways to implement them. Theres atvery strong sort of e theme to a lot of your work. I mean, in the past, weve seen how yohad the waterfalls at Brooklyn Bridge in new york. Youve got a waterfall exhibit here, also, at tate modern, and then you also in the past had the shock tactic of dyeing rivers green in cities, something which youve stopped. Why is climate so important to your work . I meanould also mention ice watch, which, of course, you had glaciers oud shipped in from greenland to the uk. Why is climate im old enough to remember that there was, like, the distinction between culture and nature, and now we know th nature isnt something out there. Nature has been sort of taken over by humankind, so to speak. Theres no outside. Theres no everything has beec, which is what we call the anthpocene, but, as i ny years already had been interested in moss and water and in ephemeralness with anonymous, it was obviously very easy for me to start inking about, well, can i use my artworks to make explicit what it is that the scientists are talking about, what is it the politicians are talking about, what is the data report that the un is making for us . Because i think for coon people, it can be incredibly difficult to sort of say, what can i do when i look at this massive data report . When i goad the papers, it jus like, well, what does that have to do with me . So i think one of the things i was interested in is simply making tangible what it is that is going on, so the ice watch project, quite frankly, i think, offers the opportunity to look at the ice from greenland and say, oh, this is what they are talking about. This is the and interestingly, its actually very touching, and you, like, put yo hands of it, you go, oh, its really cold, and you had to know its cold, but still, feeling it on your own hand, as banal as it might sound, it is amazing, then you just realize, oh, this is tually something right in front of me. And what does that do, though, Olafur Eliasson . I mean, people are aware of whats going on people know about Climate Change. T are you saying t you actually can get people to translate this kind of awareness and thinking into action, concrete plans . I think embodied knowledge has a moreikely chance to empower people to decide to change their behavior or change the way they do things. I think its very hard to sort of instigate change if we only are relating to data, if its only disemotionalized information. You need to bring ment of emotionalization into it so that we can actually say, ok. I have a feeling about it. We shouldnt leave data behind us thery dangerous, too, as we know, right but all in all, what art c do, it can make things that are seemingly out ofsort of out of touch somehow and make it tolahable and make it ave in a way where people say, ok. I understand that. This is somehow relating to me. I get it. But what does that actually do . Because you have said that the prite sector is all about profitability, the Public Sector is about populism now, and thats irrional, and that just simply leaves the cultural sector. Youre asking too much of culture, rely, to say that it will change minds, lead to es which you know, to stop Greenhouse Gas emissions its too much. No. No, its not. In i actuly dont so, but first off, of course, i, as an artist, am just one of many artists, so when i talk, i talk for me, and not for all artists, but what i think is interesting, if you look at civic society, where do we find trust, civic trust . I mean, what do people actually identify with, and where do people say whos actually listening to me . So i think the cultural sector is a space in which people say, oh, i identify with some of that this book, this theater, this dance. This is how i would move if i could express my feelings. Peopleat a dance, they say, this is me, right, so, unlike politicians who is, like, first of all, right, always about the immediate, theyre alwa talking down to peop you are not good enough. You are not good enough andlets be honest is actually doing a lot. Its a bit unfair just tsay theyre only about profitability, but in the long run, we dont see the necess the necessary, radical change in the private sector because profitability is pushing agnst the climat so the cultural sector as a system, a civic sort os element, i think unique chance to give a voice wherpeople can t and say, this is so we push for that, but alone, the culture sector cant it, for sure. But, i mean, its interesting because raising awareness t Climate Change is one thing, and im thinking in particular of an example from australia, when in 2017, thencabinet minister Scott Morrison stood in parliament brandishing a piece of coal, saying, support fossil fuels, coal in australia. Climate change registers very high in voters priorities. 2018, 2019, you have the hottest summer on record in australia, but then what happened in eleions this year in may Scott Morrison becomes prime minister, so awareness of Climate Change doesnt necessarily tranate into people voting. I think its fair to say we have finite pool of worries, right . We can only worry so much. If people are worrying about brexit, if people are worrying about the financial crisis 2008, we know that the worry pool is full and liople do not think ofte change as being a major thinto worry, but we are, i think, seeing a radic shift. I think the consciousness about the consequences of t Global Warming is getting so Common Knowledge that we are seeing massing movents now. We have civic movements. We have the Extinction Rebellion being incredibly, interestingly, successful where they agree to make the world greater again and all the ,azing things happeni so i honestly do think that we have we will always have populism, nationalism, different kind of phobias xenophobia, homophobia popping up here and there. Thesthe headlines, but the greater trends, i think, are movin the governments are not signing up to the 1. 5 d that they promised in paris some years ago, but it is moving in the right direction, i feel. Youre a member of the social practice movement, a word which describes any art form that involves people and communities in debate, collaration, and social interaction, and youve used your art to engage with gee communities as well as, obviously, as weve been discussing, Climate Change. Do you think, then, that the best art is art which has a purpose . Well, foremost, arts purpose is to be art. I mean, thats how it is, right, and art cannot put behind somebody elses wagon, but if you think about it, art always was about something in the world. Its not like art at some point was not about anything. Even highly abstract or autonomous, avantgard was about the prciple of not being, you know, commodified and to support the notion, well, we need something abstract in our socie to have a space of agreement or have a space to sort of say, ok. I need a space in which i can just dream for a while until i can articulate what it is i want to say. Theres a debatesnithin the art world, there . I mean, ill give you a quote from an american art critic arthur danto. He says, a century ago, beauty was almost unanimously considered the supreme purpose of art and even synonymous with artistic excellence, yet today beauty has come to be viewed as an aesthetic crime. Artists a now chastised by critics if their work seems to aim at beauty. I mean, weve have the aesthetic movement, you know, art for arts sake, lets just celebrate beauty. Theres nothing wrong with that. Yes, but art for arts sake a hundred years ago so a reaction to something. It was not just some kind of autonomous, disconnected dream. It was a reaction to a highly functionalized relationship where art s working for the church or for the industry, and therefore, it moved into thadirection. Art was never in that way out of context. Art was always reflecting the time in which it was made. You cannot commodify an artwork without also implementing or having some impact on it, but to say that art is better ar when it is disconnected from a discourse or from a debate or something, we should be very careful about that because ak also do not want to the basic sort of agency away from the artist and from the artwork itself. To have a work of art essentially is to hold hands with the world. You had in the past when you were at the World Economic forum in davos in 2016, art can mitigate the numbing effect created by the glut of information were faced with today and motivate people to turn thinking to doing. Are you able to measure in any way whether your art has indeed translated thinking into doing . Im so happy i said that. Thats funny. No. You did say that. Thats a quote. And in davos, also, right, but anyway, so, yeah, thats a good question. I actually do think so fundamentally, yes, but we also have to see how do we measure success. I mean, normally success is measured in all these sort of very quantifiable ways, d what we also need to say, well, art is not necessarily always quantifiable. Sometimes successitt something you can measure. Not all im artant can be measureo, so as to art, think of Something Like a safe space in which wcan have difficult conversations. A museum like the tate, it is a place where you can have conversations you simply cannot have in other places, and inhat sense, there is something about, where can i exercise together with somebody with whom i fundamentally disagree . It is very interesting. We would think the parliament would be able to do that, but we see now how they cant even come up with simg e things without fallt against each other and excluding each other, so i am completely certain that as a i dont want to say peace negotiations and something,ngut this notion of sha without having to agree is something that culture lets say culture and art is capable of in quite unue ways. As part of your thinking, i should mention that in 20 you put forward a proposal take a deep breath to celebrate and that idea didnt really take off. It consisted of people across the world inhaling and exhaling on behalf of a person, a movent, or a cause, and, you know, it didnt get a good reception in the british press. The times described is as hilarious and son. I mean, are you hurt by rejection or when people dont get your ideas . I think that happens. I mean, it happens quite often, actually. I propose something, and then people say, oh, my, this is really a horrible idea, then, so, i mean, keep pushing things, you will get rejections thats just how it is th and it didnt mean i stopped it, and i think its still an amazing idea. It was too contemplative for london athe time, who were all in the head, and maybe in the future, theyill be in the body, and i will do it at some other time. You sort of register it on a website in a personal kind of breath bubble. A work of art like that is a process, and you sort it didnt actually even find its final shape before we thactualln with something else. As an artist who works like i do, i work autside the museums, in public spaces. I work with politicians. I even wank with private sectorso on and so forth, so i need to face the fact that i get a lot of rejection, too. So, talking about the role of art in society, theres been a lot of collaboration, of course, between art and the world of desigtechnology, but when it comes to science, do you think theres a connection between art and science . I mean, Albert Einstein said, arts and scienc are branches from the same tree, and the french painter Georges Braque said, art is meant to disturb. Science reassures, so theres obviously been this debate for some time. How do you see the re of art and science in my artistic practice, i actually use a lot of primarily social scientists. I have gre and i enjoy, and i learn a lot from science. At the end of the day, you could sort of break it up and say, science is more about how, and ten is more about why why are doing all of this . And science is mor blike, well, letak it down. How are we actually doing all of this . But still, both of are models of the world to some extent, models that has impa on the world, also, and they are about reflection and understanding the world, so they haveings in, but we should not sort of make them overlap completely it would functionalize both in the wrong direction. But you yourself, i mean, youre very ch an activist not only an art activist and, you know, part of the social practice movement, as weve discussed. You actually want to help in very tangible ways. Youve very clae connections to afr through ethiopia. Youve adopted two children from ethiia, and youre very keen on bringing power through solar energy to people who dont have access to power in any way, and youve set up this notforprofit project called little sun. Yes. Let me show it to you, zeinab. D see, actually its funny because art and science and what can i do outside of the conventional comfort zones, see, no this is a solar pane very small one, very good one. Heres an led, and inde, theres a reargeable battery, so i can turn it on. This means during the day, i can harvest with this side energy. I can use that energy to replace petroleum and kerosene and maybe stop chopping down the trees, and then at nighi h, sustainable, affordable light when i want to do my homework, when i want to keep my kiosk opened up a little bger, so light as it is in my work, as well is also about empowering yourself. Its about reflecting on yr own life. On one side, its a functional thing we need light; we simply do need light s also an emotional thing. Light is also about livelihood. Por is about empowermen and to charge yourself is really also about, well, if i n illuminate myself and my own homework, for that matter, i have a life. I can take charge of my own life. Its an uphill struggle, ist it to get people to embrace solar energy and other fo of renewable energy. There has to be, i believe, in little suns case and theres wonderful otrtners doing similar work like us out in the socall rural areas. The thing is, there has to be an economic upside to it, too. It has to be cheaper than the petroleum the investment into this or once you actually have it, thats maybe the firsstep, but once you actually use it, you are not buying petroleum for the next 3 or 4 yea. When you look across the european Political Landscape and yolook at Climate Change and how the greens performed very well in the recent European Parliament elections we had the Extinction Rebellion protests here in the United Kingdom do you think this kind of issuebased kind of politics is going to be the politics that were going to see more . We see now a lot of talk. Theres not a massive legislative change yet. Theres not a lot sort of reorganizati of the systems which have been creating the nooblems that we are i so im curious to see if the civic interest might push the politicians. You would like to think that the politicians would go first, but now it doesnt see to be happening, which means that the civic i mean, the people, as we see around the world need to probably take the lead an elect different politicians. We had a party at the recent election in denmark who simply did not have a green or a sort of climate accoun and then they suddenly did not get elected. It wasery interesting. Even their own electorate did not support them anymore. But the speaker of the danish parliament, explaining the loss of 3 seats in the European Parliament to the greens, was, he said, that was down to climate fools. And i thlot of people picked up on that. That was funny. Yes. Youve described yourselfyou said, im happy to be called a climate fool. Well, the madmen of yesterday, as we know, are the visionaries of tomrow who said that again . But thing is, here, probably we need a slightly more robust change than we would like to acknowledge. The situation is, foolishness, you know, obstructionist gonna be honorable, and, as much as we are trying to reorganizeim trying to reorganize whatever i can do, both in my art, as a person, in my studio e thing is, we are facing situations where we suddenly now what is it, 11 years 1. 5 degree . S is not matching itt adding up. So here you are with this big celebration of your work at te modern. What can we expect from Olafur Eliasson in the future . Well, what is happening, is, of course,ow our present, like the way we sit and talk here, instead of being past, w from the past, instead of being guided by the past, lets say, we are probably now in a situation we have to be guided by the future, so were gonna have to reconsider by the way we do things aving a future imaginary which is gonna be positive and hopeful and say, this is where we go. Were gonna go there together. Olafur eliasson, thank you very much indeedoming on hardtalk. Thank you so much. Thank you. 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