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Olafur Eliasson's Weather Project - Tate Modern

The eighteenth-century writer Samuel Johnson famously remarked ‘It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.’

Eliasson takes this ubiquitous subject as the basis for exploring ideas about experience, mediation and representation.

In this installation, The Weather Project, representations of the sun and sky dominate the expanse of the Turbine Hall. A fine mist permeates the space, as if creeping in from the environment outside. Throughout the day, the mist accumulates into faint, cloud-like formations, before dissipating across the space. A glance overhead, to see where the mist might escape, reveals that the ceiling of the Turbine Hall has disappeared, replaced by a reflection of the space below. At the far end of the hall is a giant semi-circular form made up of hundreds of mono-frequency lamps. The arc repeated in the mirror overhead produces a sphere of dazzling radiance linking the real space with the reflection. Generally used in street lighting, mono-frequency lamps emit light at such a narrow frequency that colours other than yellow and black are invisible, thus transforming the visual field around the sun into a vast duotone landscape.

That is what the Tate literature had to say about the installation. I think the photos below will give you an idea of why I think even the artist would be awed by his own creation.
 



This is the sight you are greeted with when you enter the gallery from the west entrance. It was a particularly bitter and miserable day outside, making it all the more bizarre to come in out of the rain to a blazing sun.


The sun itself is not a disc, but a half-moon reflected on itself. I kept expecting to warm up and need to start peeling off layers, because I was so close to an intensely bright sun, albeit a fake one, I just assumed it would emit a great deal of heat. 

Not only was there no warmth, there was no sound. The sheer size of the hall seemed to absorb almost all sound. Because of this, even though I could see all the people around me, I couldn't hear them, so they seemed nonexistent.

The cold, despite being so near to the sun, the soundlessness, the eerie light, all served to make me feel like a survivor of some apocalyptic event.


For some reason, people avoided coming up close to the sun. I suppose, like me, they assumed that they would be burnt if they got too close.

The picture on the right is of the ceiling. At this stage, I was still absorbing everything above eye-level and hadn't yet looked around at eve-level and below.
Wondering what all the little bodies on the ceiling were doing ? This is it. Everyone. Young, old, fat, thin, posh and poor. They were all spread out on the floor making shapes with their bodies. The images reflected on the ceiling were so tiny that people shed all embarrassment of being caught looking at one's own reflection.  It was amazing to see. People were literally flopping around like suffocating fish, giggling and laughing. For such a prim or rough nation it was remarkable to see so many of them reacting in the same way to something and sharing such an innocence.

 

These are my friends Zena and Louisa trying to move in synchrony. They didn't have all that much luck but had so much fun trying it didn't matter. They were so absorbed in what they were doing that they were not in the least bit bothered by me photographing them. The same was true for most of the other people, but I couldn't be as invasive as I was with these two.


There were people trying to make art out of art, and the creation on the left is one such example.

The lady above exuded loneliness. She was desperately trying to experience the installation as everyone else was but was so self-conscious that all she could do was lie their stiffly.

 

7 December 2003