Sobre el paisaje. Entrevista a Olafur Eliasson

PHILIP URSPRUNG: Few notions in artistic discourse are as loaded with meaning as "landscape".We can go back to the Middle Ages and find representations of landscapes that signify the inlfuential power of a ruler. [...]Today is seems that landscapes are ussually abandoned territories that deal with the effects of industrialization. Your are among the few contemporary artist who regularly, almost obsessively photograph landscapes. Can you talk about your interest in landscape?

OLAFUR ELIASSON: I think it is important always to think about landscape in relation to the person experiencing it. I mostly move arround urban setting, and therefore base my sense of scale, space, depth, time and speed on that particular landscape. The nice thing about going into a landscape is the fact that you can focus your eyes on something very far away. You can actually use your focus to estimate distance, whereas in an urban setting you tend to make estimates based on store knowledge and on memory. How time and space are expirienced in a landscape very much depends on how you evaluate distances and temporal issues as you involve yourself in landscape. This is important when, going into urban life, you suddenly realize that what you take for granted as temporal and spatial parameters are in fact culivated and not natural at all. We can also talk about the volume and depth of a landscape-its spatiality is very much based on the season, the time of the day, on its relation to the light. [...]What I particulary like is the feeling that has an affinity with the scale of my body. The avarge hills are 400, 600 or 800 maybe 1000 meter high, which makes them easy to understand, physically speaking. This means that when looking at the hill, I can still relate to the dimensions of my body.

                          

ANNA ENGERBERG-PEDERSEN: So its a question of the scale, of the realtion between your body and the surroundings?

OE: When you're in a landscape, you use other people to measure it with. If you see a person, not only see the size of this person in relation to landscape, but also how wind may be almost blowing this person over. So by looking at the person, you can sense the strength of the wind. When you have people around you, they become a way of measuring visibility, depth, time, and distance. If you are alone, your senses are...well its diferent. One way isnt better than other.

PU: [...] Why do you almost always make series? 

OE: In a sense, the series constitue a systematized way of looking at the lanscape. They're specific methological studies and embody a certain desire to organize and rationalize a particular phenomenon. If there is a person in the picture, you focus too much on the relation between this person and the landscape.

[...] PU: Another concept is of course nature.How would you describe it in relation to landscape?

OE: The natural enviroment is always a landscape when it's considered in relation to people. We filter it through our minds and bodies, it has a representational level to it-wich is valuable as being nonrepresentational, I find. But when there´s no relation, we need to define this so called objective thing out there, and then we call it nature. But i dont think nature as nature exists. When we think about nature, we instantly develop a relationship to it, and it ceases to be nature and becomes landscape. Nature says more about culture perhaps, than it does about nature it self.