Olafur Eliasson's 'Lifeworld' Installation Goes Global

Life’s a blur in the Icelandic-Danish artist’s latest video piece.

Olafur Eliasson is days away from releasing his new video project around the world. The piece features a series of site-specific installations, spanning across New York, London, Seoul, and Berlin. Known for his thought-provoking installations, Eliasson slows things down and invites his audience to steep in their own blurry reflection.

Lifeworld will trade the crystal-clarity of advertisement screens for ethereally unfocused footage of each city, beamed back onto itself. Amidst urban chaos, the piece puts the rat race on pause to present the world in a soft and ambiguous glow. As shapes and colors fold into one another, the artist makes room for a moment of introspection. “Slowing down is part of opening up,” Eliasson tells Artnet “It’s in slowing down your attention that you suddenly see more than you thought you would see.”

Following in footsteps of other major atmospheric installations like Ice Watch and The weather project, Lifeworld mines beauty in the immediate environment. “I think my blurry film is a closer depiction of reality than the one normally seen on screens because it’s hospitable. It holds space for you. I think that is a kind of fierce tenderness,” Eliasson explains. Finding inspiration in the here and now, the artist offers a moment of reconnection and return, even if it is just for a few minutes.

Commissioned by CIRCA, Lifeworld will appear every evening in Piccadilly Lights in London, K-Pop Square in Seoul, and Limes Kurfũrstendamm in Berlin at 8:24 p.m. local time from October 1 through December 1, 2024. Throughout the month of November, the piece will appear between 11:57 p.m. and midnight EST in Times Square.