Email this article Representing the Weather in the Turbine Hall: Olaf Eliasson’s Weather Project
Abstract
The weather is an important concept for Olafur Eliasson’s art production. Eliasson has explained that he sees the weather forecast as frontier of “now and here” because of the fact that the weather forecast is something that brings the future “back to be included in our cultivated sense of the here and now.” The individual’s experience of time and space is therefore central to the conception of Eliasson’s The Weather Project. The installation was conceived for the Unilever Series at the Tate Modern, London and was exhibited from October 2003 to March 2004 in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern.
This paper will seek to demonstrate that The Weather Project utilized the space of the museum to redefine the temporal orientation of the individual viewer. An analysis of how Eliasson used the Turbine Hall itself will reveal the use of space as an element of the artwork itself, instead of being the space which projected the reality of the work of art. The project engendered a form of community that will be considered in terms of how it was formally achieved, and how such a sense of community affected the individual’s orientation within the exhibit. Finally, an examination of the concept of second-personhood will reveal how The Weather Project achieved an awareness of the collective through the viewer’s own self-identification. Thus, The Weather Project demonstrates the use of a museum space that on formal, social, and individual levels creates a heightened awareness of a viewer’s placement within space and time.
This paper will seek to demonstrate that The Weather Project utilized the space of the museum to redefine the temporal orientation of the individual viewer. An analysis of how Eliasson used the Turbine Hall itself will reveal the use of space as an element of the artwork itself, instead of being the space which projected the reality of the work of art. The project engendered a form of community that will be considered in terms of how it was formally achieved, and how such a sense of community affected the individual’s orientation within the exhibit. Finally, an examination of the concept of second-personhood will reveal how The Weather Project achieved an awareness of the collective through the viewer’s own self-identification. Thus, The Weather Project demonstrates the use of a museum space that on formal, social, and individual levels creates a heightened awareness of a viewer’s placement within space and time.