Olafur Eliasson Quotes

1) Choose a person, older than yourself, you see frequently — not too often by approx once a week or once a month. Maybe one of your grandparents if they are still alive. 2) Every time you meet the chosen person you press your 2 pointing-fingers firmly against your eyes for 10 to 20 seconds until various colors and patterns arise. 3) Try to note or memorize the patterns and colors in connection with the context and repeat the practice every time you meet the chosen person for a as long as possible, minimum 6 months. 4) After minimum 6 months of this practice you can recall the person, virtually by pressing your eyes for a while. In the midst of the colors and pattern a sense of presence of the chosen person arrives even after the chosen person has died.

A writer spinning out the manuscript of a book is like a banker generating debts he knows can never be repaid. From one perspective it’s a waste of time, ‘the deliberate pouring of water through a sieve’, in Dostoyevsky’s phrase. The effort will not be repaid. From another, however, it’s an incredibly important process in which cultural charisma – intellectual glamour – is generated via a mechanism of guilt. A bookshelf is a glamorous row of reproaches. We know that there are books we ought to read, and ought to have read, because they are said to be wonderful and capable of making us better people. They sit there on the shelf, seeming to watch us, waiting for our best moment of spiritual preparedness. Yet we fail to read them. As a result we feel guilty. The books seem to say to us: – You are trivial and lazy. Your life could be so much richer and more creative, yet you fritter away your attention on television and Facebook, or idle gossip, or sports, or Olafur Eliasson installations. This guilt is much more wonderful than the contents of the books themselves could ever be, and spiritually much more uplifting. The unreadness of books outstrips their readness in beauty and in utility. It’s tremendously important to believe that there are heights which we’ve failed to attain, mountains we can glimpse in the distance but not climb. It’s almost like believing in heaven. To quote Kafka once more: Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it.