Playing with space and light | Olafur Eliasson

184,542 views ・ 2009-08-07

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:18
I have a studio in Berlin --
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let me cue on here --
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which is down there in this snow, just last weekend.
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In the studio we do a lot of experiments.
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I would consider the studio more like a laboratory.
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I have occasional meetings with scientists.
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And I have an academy, a part of the University of Fine Arts in Berlin.
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We have an annual gathering of people,
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and that is called Life in Space.
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Life in Space is really not necessarily about
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how we do things, but why we do things.
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Do you mind looking, with me, at that little cross in the center there?
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So just keep looking. Don't mind me.
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So you will have a yellow circle, and we will do an after-image experiment.
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When the circle goes away you will have another color, the complementary color.
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I am saying something. And your eyes and your brain are saying something back.
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This whole idea of sharing, the idea of constituting reality
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by overlapping what I say and what you say --
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think of a movie.
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Since two years now, with some stipends from the science ministry in Berlin,
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I've been working on these films
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where we produce the film together.
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I don't necessarily think the film is so interesting.
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Obviously this is not interesting at all in the sense of the narrative.
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But nevertheless, what the potential is --
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and just keep looking there --
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what the potential is, obviously,
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is to kind of move the border of who is the author,
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and who is the receiver.
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Who is the consumer, if you want,
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and who has responsibility for what one sees?
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I think there is a socializing dimension
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in, kind of, moving that border.
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Who decides what reality is?
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This is the Tate Modern in London.
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The show was, in a sense, about that.
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It was about a space in which I put half a semi-circular yellow disk.
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I also put a mirror in the ceiling, and some fog, some haze.
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And my idea was to make the space tangible.
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With such a big space, the problem is
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obviously that there is a discrepancy
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between what your body can embrace,
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and what the space, in that sense, is.
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So here I had the hope that by inserting some natural elements,
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if you want -- some fog -- I could make the space tangible.
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And what happens is that people, they start to see themselves in this space.
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So look at this. Look at the girl.
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Of course they have to look through a bloody camera
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in a museum. Right? That's how museums are working today.
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But look at her face there,
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as she's checking out, looking at herself in the mirror.
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"Oh! That was my foot there!"
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She wasn't really sure whether she was seeing herself or not.
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And in that whole idea,
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how do we configure the relationship between our body and the space?
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How do we reconfigure it?
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How do we know that being in a space makes a difference?
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Do you see when I said in the beginning, it's about
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why, rather than how?
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The why meant really,
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"What consequences does it have when I take a step?"
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"What does it matter?"
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"Does it matter if I am in the world or not?"
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"And does it matter whether the kind of actions I take
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filter into a sense of responsibility?"
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Is art about that?
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I would say yes. It is obviously about
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not just about decorating the world, and making it look even better,
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or even worse, if you ask me.
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It's obviously also about taking responsibility,
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like I did here when throwing some green dye in the river
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in L.A., Stockholm, Norway and Tokyo,
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among other places.
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The green dye is not environmentally dangerous,
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but it obviously looks really rather frightening.
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And it's on the other side also, I think, quite beautiful,
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as it somehow shows the turbulence in these kind of downtown areas,
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in these different places of the world.
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The "Green river," as a kind of activist idea, not a part of an exhibition,
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it was really about showing people,
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in this city, as they walk by,
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that space has dimensions. A space has time.
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And the water flows through the city with time.
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The water has an ability to make
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the city negotiable, tangible.
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Negotiable meaning that it makes a difference
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whether you do something or not.
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It makes a difference whether you say, "I'm a part of this city.
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And if I vote it makes a difference.
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If I take a stand, it makes a difference."
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This whole idea of a city not being a picture is,
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I think, something that art, in a sense,
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always was working with.
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The idea that art can actually evaluate the relationship
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between what it means to be in a picture,
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and what it means to be in a space. What is the difference?
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The difference between thinking and doing.
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So these are different experiments with that. I won't go into them.
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Iceland, lower right corner, my favorite place.
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These kinds of experiments, they filter into architectural models.
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These are ongoing experiments.
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One is an experiment I did for BMW,
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an attempt to make a car.
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It's made out of ice.
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A crystalline stackable principle in the center on the top,
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which I am trying to turn into a concert hall in Iceland.
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A sort of a run track, or a walk track,
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on the top of a museum in Denmark,
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which is made of colored glass, going all around.
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So the movement with your legs
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will change the color of your horizon.
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And two summers ago at the Hyde Park in London,
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with the Serpentine Gallery:
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a kind of a temporal pavilion where
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moving was the only way you could see the pavilion.
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This summer, in New York:
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there is one thing about falling water which is very much about
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the time it takes for water to fall.
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It's quite simple and fundamental.
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I've walked a lot in the mountains in Iceland.
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And as you come to a new valley,
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as you come to a new landscape, you have a certain view.
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If you stand still, the landscape
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doesn't necessarily tell you how big it is.
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It doesn't really tell you what you're looking at.
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The moment you start to move, the mountain starts to move.
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The big mountains far away, they move less.
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The small mountains in the foreground, they move more.
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And if you stop again, you wonder,
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"Is that a one-hour valley?
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Or is that a three-hour hike, or is that a whole day I'm looking at?"
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If you have a waterfall in there,
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right out there at the horizon; you look at the waterfall
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and you go, "Oh, the water is falling really slowly."
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And you go, "My god it's really far away and it's a giant waterfall."
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If a waterfall is falling faster,
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it's a smaller waterfall which is closer by --
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because the speed of falling water is pretty constant everywhere.
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And your body somehow knows that.
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So this means a waterfall is a way of measuring space.
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Of course being an iconic city like New York,
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that has had an interest in somehow
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playing around with the sense of space, you could say that New York
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wants to seem as big as possible.
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Adding a measurement
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to that is interesting:
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the falling water suddenly gives you a sense
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of, "Oh, Brooklyn is exactly this much --
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the distance between Brooklyn and Manhattan, in this case
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the lower East River is this big."
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So it was not just necessarily about putting nature into the cities.
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It was also about giving the city a sense of dimension.
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And why would we want to do that?
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Because I think it makes a difference
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whether you have a body
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that feels a part of a space,
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rather than having a body which is just in front of a picture.
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And "Ha-ha, there is a picture and here is I. And what does it matter?"
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Is there a sense of consequences?
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So if I have a sense of the space,
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if I feel that the space is tangible,
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if I feel there is time,
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if there is a dimension I could call time,
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I also feel that I can change the space.
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And suddenly it makes a difference
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in terms of making space accessible.
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One could say this is about
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community, collectivity.
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It's about being together.
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How do we create public space?
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What does the word "public" mean today anyway?
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So, asked in that way,
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I think it raises great things about
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parliamentary ideas, democracy, public space,
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being together, being individual.
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How do we create
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an idea which is both tolerant to individuality,
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and also to collectivity,
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without polarizing the two
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into two different opposites?
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Of course the political agendas in the world
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has been very obsessed, polarizing the two against each other
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into different, very normative ideas.
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I would claim that art and culture,
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and this is why art and culture are so incredibly interesting
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in the times we're living in now,
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have proven that one can
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create a kind of a space
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which is both sensitive to individuality
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and to collectivity.
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It's very much about this causality, consequences.
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It's very much about the way we link
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thinking and doing.
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So what is between thinking and doing?
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And right in-between thinking and doing,
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I would say, there is experience.
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And experience is not just
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a kind of entertainment in a non-casual way.
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Experience is about responsibility.
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Having an experience is taking part in the world.
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Taking part in the world is really about sharing responsibility.
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So art, in that sense,
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I think holds an incredible relevance
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in the world in which we're moving into,
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particularly right now.
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That's all I have. Thank you very much.
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09:27
(Applause)
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