Press Release: LIFEWORLD, Olafur Eliasson

CIRCA PRESENTS LIFEWORLD BY OLAFUR ELIASSON
CONTEMPLATING WHO WE ARE AND WHERE WE ARE, HERE AND NOW

 

Download the media pack, here.

 

(Piccadilly Circus, London) 1 October 2024 ➳ CIRCA presents Lifeworld, a landmark series of five site-specific original works by the celebrated Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson.

Eliasson, internationally renowned for artworks that address how we co-create our worlds, is transforming several of the world’s most iconic urban screens into expansive abstractions. Lifeworld will appear every evening at 20:24 for three months (1 October—31 December 2024) on Piccadilly Lights in London, K-Pop Square in Seoul, Limes Kurfürstendamm in Berlin and throughout November in Times Square, New York and globally on WeTransfer.com.

Lifeworld marks the first works from Elliasson under his recently-announced guest curatorship of WeTransfer, who have partnered with CIRCA as exclusive Digital Screen Partner. The commission will also take shape as a unique digital experience on WeTransfer’s online public platform, where viewers from around the world can engage with the artwork 24/7.

Lifeworld appears at a time marked by polarising public debate: during the final days of the US presidential election and throughout the month of November, the public artwork will be presented synchronised across Times Squares’ 92 screens, in collaboration with the world’s largest and longest-running digital public art programme, Midnight Moment. Eliasson speaks to the importance of public space for “hosting a plurality of perspectives, co-created with whoever is there at that point in time”.  Following other major public interventions by Eliasson, such as Ice Watch (2014), which drew attention to environmental and social issues, Lifeworld calls on us today to look at ourselves as individuals, to contemplate who we are and where we are, here and now.

Our connections and sensorial relationships to urban public space form the basis of this ambitious new artwork created for CIRCA. To Eliasson, the blur is in fact precise because as an abstraction, it offers up a more truthful representation of the current time and our feelings connected to it. In each iteration of Lifeworld, onlookers appear in a sort of mise en abyme, a recursive depiction of the onlooker within the imagery – allowing the viewer to see themselves seeing space. What emerges is “a sort of mirror, offering a radically different perspective on our immediate environment”. It aims to draw attention to the common world for which we all share responsibility.

Olafur Eliasson says: “Lifeworld explores how soft abstraction – images that are intentionally undefined and open to our personal interpretations – can reveal our place in the world in 2024. Sites like Piccadilly and Times Square are enormously impressive spectacles, with their advertising screens that usually display crisp, sensational imagery. It’s a thrill; but the environment also determines my actions – driving me mostly to spend or to consume. Lifeworld shows the immediate site anew and its hazy qualities may prompt questions. If you are suddenly confronted with the reality of having a choice, you might ask what cities, lives and environments do we want to inhabit? And how do I want to take part in them?”

Lifeworld takes inspiration from the phenomenological notion that in an unmediated world, we inhabit and experience in common with others and nature. With this work, Eliasson suggests that by connecting to the lived here and now of experience, we may reconnect with one another, learn to live in uncertain times, and even to embrace the potential of a so-far shapeless future.

 

HAND-SIGNED PRINTS BY OLAFUR ELIASSON

 

On the occasion of his artwork Lifeworld, CIRCA releases a series of four time-limited-edition prints by Olafur Eliasson. The prints reflect the artist’s long-standing investigation of light, colour, and the ways we perceive and interact with our surroundings. For each screen-print, Eliasson has analysed the light levels and colour palettes of the physical sites of Lifeworld to dematerialise the cityscapes into four evocative colour wheels.

Created especially for CIRCA, the hand-signed edition (£300 +VAT indiv/£1,000 +VAT complete set of four) applies the same system of colour inversion as Eliasson’s artwork Lifeworld.

Available 1 October until midnight 31 December 2024, this time-limited-edition harks back to Eliasson’s extensive ‘colour experiment’ painting series, circular canvases that challenge our expectations and encourage our eyes to stay in constant motion. To discover more, click here.

Josef O’Connor, Founder and Artistic Director, CIRCA says: “By embracing uncertainty, can we catch sight of a world without familiar limitations? Can we glimpse a city where, instead of being atomised by fear and self-doubt, we are united by softness, beauty, and tenderness? Many of Olafur’s pioneering works — from Tate Modern’s The weather project (2003) to his 2016 takeover of the Palace of Versaille — orchestrate altered atmospheres and compel audiences to see their surroundings anew. In Lifeworld’s aura, our urban environments transgress their physical boundaries, inviting us to contemplate our own place within these urban worlds — and perhaps show how we, too, can escape our limitations.”

Jean Cooney, Director of Times Square Arts, says: “By abstracting the energy of Times Square itself, Eliasson’s Lifeworld offers a rare moment of meditation – a poetic gesture on a monumental scale that holds the potential to ground us in a place designed to perpetually economize our attention and in a political climate that offers little psychic reprieve. We’re excited to present this incredibly timely and distinct Midnight Moment and join this global collaboration.”

Holly Fraser, VP of Content, WePresent and WeTransfer says: “In a world where ephemerality and disposability are ever more present in our daily lives, it’s increasingly rare to come across something that stops you in your tracks, that forces a curious second look, and that —at its very best—allows you to see a tired world through new eyes. But this is the transformative power of art, and it’s a power that Olafur Eliasson has mastered through his multilayered practice. At WeTransfer and WePresent we commission projects that we hope have this effect on the millions of creators that use our service every day. By partnering with Olafur Eliasson this year as our guest curator, and collaborating with CIRCA to put Lifeworld on a global scale, we are excited that, no matter where in the world they’re based, millions of people will now experience the power of his artwork too.”

 

NOTES TO EDITORS

CIRCA 20:24 – SEASON IV PROGRAMME
Lifeworld by Olafur Eliasson (1 October until 31 December 2024)
20:24 BST/GMT ➳ London, Piccadilly Lights
20:24 CET ➳ Berlin, Limes, Kurfürstendamm
20:24 KST ➳ Seoul, COEX K-Pop Square
11:57 EST ➳ New York, Times Square*
24/7 ➳ WeTransfer, Worldwide*

To view the exhibition map, click here

*Lifeworld will appear every evening throughout November in Times Square, New York, presented in collaboration with the world’s largest and longest-running digital public art programme, Midnight Moment.

*Lifeworld will be available to view (1 October – 31 December 2024) on WeTransfer, inviting a global public to experience the project from anywhere in the world. To discover more, click here.

 

 

ABOUT OLAFUR ELIASSON
The works of Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967) explore the relevance of art in the world at large. Since 1997, his wide-ranging solo shows – featuring installations, paintings, sculptures, photography, and film – have appeared in major museums around the globe. His art is driven by his interests in perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of self and community.

Eliasson is internationally-renowned for his public installations that challenge the way we perceive and co-create our environments. In 2003, he made ‘The weather project’, a glowing indoor sun shrouded in mist at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London. In 2008, Eliasson constructed four expansive artificial waterfalls along the Manhattan and Brooklyn shorelines for ‘The New York City Waterfalls’. He has also explored art’s potential to address climate change: for ‘Ice Watch’, he brought large blocks of free-floating glacial ice to the city centres of Copenhagen in 2014, Paris in 2015, and London in 2018. Passers-by could touch fragments of the Greenlandic glacial ice and witness its fragility as it disappeared before them. On the occasion of the 2020 German Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Eliasson created ‘Earth Speakr’ together with children around the world and support from the German Federal Foreign Office; the global artwork invites kids to speak up for the planet. In 2022, Eliasson opened ‘Shadows travelling on the sea of the day’, a cluster of large site-specific mirror pavilions that draw attention to the delicate habitat of the Qatari desert outside Doha.

In 2012, Eliasson started the social business Little Sun, and in 2014, he and Sebastian Behmann founded Studio Other Spaces, an office for art and architecture. In 2019, Eliasson was named UNDP Goodwill Ambassador for climate action. In 2023, he received the Praemium Imperiale from the Japanese imperial family for outstanding contributions to the development, promotion, and progress of the arts.

Located in Berlin, Studio Olafur Eliasson comprises a large team of craftspeople, architects, archivists, researchers, administrators, cooks, art historians, and specialised technicians.

https://olafureliasson.net | @studioolafureliasson

ABOUT WETRANSFER & WEPRESENT
WeTransfer is the simplest way to share ideas, collaborate with teams and earn money, all in one platform. By offering fast, easy and sustainable tools, we help tens of millions of creators, entrepreneurs and businesses globally to make an impact through creativity. WeTransfer is a long-time champion of using business as a force for good and a certified B Corporation™.

WeTransfer’s Academy Award-winning arts platform WePresent acts as the company’s cultural torchbearer to a monthly audience of 3 million in 190 countries. Collaborating with emerging young talent to renowned artists such as Marina Abramovic, Riz Ahmed, FKA twigs and Solange Knowles, WePresent showcases the best in art, photography, film, music, literature and more, championing diversity in everything it does. The platform’s commissions range from editorial features to films, photography series, events, installations and social media activations, with an aim to offer a fresh take on the magic and mystery of creative ideas.

https://wepresent.wetransfer.com | @wepresent @wetransfer

ABOUT TIMES SQUARE ARTS
Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, collaborates with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to experiment and engage with one of the world’s most iconic urban places. Through the Square’s electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant spaces and popular venues, Times Square Arts commissions, produces and presents work by leading contemporary artists in a wide range of mediums to engage with the district’s broad and diverse audiences.

Times Square Arts’ Midnight Moment program is the world’s largest and longest-running digital public art series. Presented nightly to millions of viewers each year, Midnight Moment showcases the work of contemporary artists on one of the most iconic public canvases — the electronic billboards of Times Square. Synchronised nightly from 11:57pm to 12am on over 92 digital displays spanning 41st to 49th Streets, this program brings public art on a monumental scale to New Yorkers and visitors from all across the globe, 364 nights a year. Presenting a new Midnight Moment each month, the program has featured the work of over 140 artists since 2012, thanks to the Times Square Advertising Coalition and our participating billboard operators.

http://arts.timessquarenyc.org | @tsqarts

ABOUT CIRCA
CIRCA is redefining the intersection of art, technology, and public engagement. By transforming iconic digital screens, such as London’s Piccadilly Lights, into platforms for contemporary ideas, we enable artists to reflect on the world “circa now” and connect with a diverse, worldwide audience. CIRCA commissions and presents thought-provoking works every evening at 20:24, 365 days a year, challenging conventional roles of art and fostering cultural dialogue. Our #CIRCAECONOMY model supports the creative ecosystem through accessible art sales, funding public initiatives, and empowering artists globally. CIRCA is committed to pushing beyond conventional boundaries, creating an evolving platform for cultural exchange and artistic freedom.

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