feature Olafur eliassOn
junior: Ooh, look at this car. What a beaut.
businessman: Mmmm, classic isn’t it.
junior: Timeless. It says that right here, look:
‘a timeless classic’.
businessman: Well, that’s what they say. I mean, it isn’t really
timeless, is it? It’s not a car for all times and it won’t
last forever, they just want you to think that if you
pay that much now it’ll be worth that much tomorrow.
That’s what they’re implying by the word ‘timeless’.
junior: Nnnnnngh…
[mouth full of mashed potato flavoured crisps]
businessman: They could say, ‘This is going to be a very
nice car tomorrow’ if they wanted to attract
speculators. As J.K. Galbraith pointed out, financial
euphoria before a drop in the market is always based
above and facing page: Serpentine Gallery Summer Pavilion
2007 visualisations. © Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen
on mass speculation on something apparently new.
junior: Yes, it’s called the futures market, after all.
Not the pasts…
businessman: But we’re talking utility here. The buyer would want
to use the car now; it’s not symbolic of something
notional to be sold on later. But by showing us a
picture of a nice shiny car that will stay that way
This year the Serpentine Gallery pavilion, designed by Eliasson
forever in our memory, they are indeed showing
in collaboration with the architect Kjetil Thorsen, will attempt to
us a timeless car.
become just such a place of production. Instead of the usual verbal
junior: Not quite what you get then, is it? Want a crisp?
representations delivered with varying levels of formality, from boozy
chats to lectures, Eliasson intends to fill the programme with experiments. Value, suggests Eliasson, is conferred upon the image rather
Now, I have reservations when the words ‘experiment’ and ‘research’ are than the experience of the object itself, on Bergson’s drawn line
used by artists. If artists truly did conduct laboratory-style experiments, rather than the time lapsed. The trick is to try and preserve the full
they would be dull artists indeed, employing a prescribed method over dimensional experience of an artwork without it being involuntarily
and over to prove a statistical or behavioural norm or anomaly. Perhaps flattened into the timelessness of historiography. Depriving an artwork
the term ‘investigation/demonstration’ would be a more accurate, if of time, Eliasson warns, locks us into a perspective grid and denies its
less wieldy, way to describe the tabletop activities in the pavilion, as production of difference and the ‘parliamentary thinking’ required of a
it suggests a procedure much more in line with that of art, where an productive space. His programme for the pavilion, then, endeavours to
outcome may be speculated upon, even known beforehand, or it might demonstrate rather than illustrate ideas, to produce events based on
be a total mystery until it happens. This may seem a touch pedantic, actions in time rather than the abstracting effect of language.
but it is an important point when thinking about collaborative use of In light of the inherent problem of image and language, Eliasson’s
social space that extends activity beyond the realm of representation approach to making a survey show at SFMOMA in September, which
into that of experience. will go on to New York and Dallas in 2008, is to reinterpret the works
Durational time, insists Eliasson, is at the root of this phenomenon, each time, changing the lineup so that it is clearly a new show, not a
as it drags us away from the abstraction that language constructs and static retrospective – an idea he likens to making a series of mix tapes
tethers us to: “The moment we sit down and try to find a truth, we from the same record collection, drawing out different cadences each
think we have left this idea of constructed reality, and I think that is time. What’s more, like all performative work, from the most chaotic
always counterproductive,” he says. Henri Bergson’s identification of improvisation to tightly scripted theatre, each outing will essentially
durational and abstract time becomes useful here. In Creative Evolution make for a different piece, as the subjectivity of the viewer eclipses any
(1911) he asks us to draw a line with a pencil on paper with our eyes essentialist tendencies of the museum. Eliasson’s enduring project, it
closed. When we open our eyes the line represents the abstract time would seem, is to use movement, change and differentiation to turn us
that corresponds to the durational time we experienced. It’s a simple all into spect-actors.
idea, but its consequences are far-reaching, an aspect of which
was perfectly demonstrated on the train, as luck would have it, by a The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007, by Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil
conversation at the next table between a businessman and his office Thorsen, is up until November; Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson is on
junior (or perhaps they were Invisible Theatre performers hired by show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 8 September to
Eliasson to make his point): 24 February
75 Artreview
Ollafur Elliason.indd 7 8/8/07 10:29:31
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