Green River

“Conversation between Olafur Eliasson and Hans Ulrich Obrist.”  

Hans Ulrich Obrist: We could start by talking about your Green River series, in 

which you completely changed the look of certain cities by colouring their rivers 

green. A good example was Stockholm, where you had a residency. How did people in Stockholm react? 

Olafur Eliasson: At the time I was working on a smaller project, but very quickly the idea of colouring downtown Stockholm became something I just had to do. I bought the pigment in Germany and came back through customs with a real feeling of suspense and excitement; after all, I had enough colorant with me to dye the whole centre of the city. This wasn't an official project; I had to work really fast, so I'd got the planning down pat together with the current and the turbulence in the river, and one Friday at half past one there I was on the bridge with Emile and a bag full of red powder and people starting to stare at us. I hesitated for a moment then emptied the bag out over the parapet and the wind whipped up this enormous red cloud. I could literally feel people in cars slowing down, the cars went all quiet. And there was this cloud, floating over the river like a layer of gas. When it came in contact with the water, all of a sudden the river turned green, it was like a shock wave. There was a crowded bus ten metres a way and everybody was staring at the water. I told Emile we should maybe move on, as if everything was perfectly normal, then I carefully put the 

bag in a trashcan, as if colouring the centre of Stockholm was the kind of thing I did every day. I went down to the studio residency and when I came out again my heart started jumping up and down like mad: the whole length of the river was completely green and all these people had stopped to look at it. Next day it was all over the front page of the papers: "The river turned green". The colorant was absolutely harmless and there was no pollution whatsoever. 

HUO: So the idea was to make the city visible for its inhabitants, who no longer take any notice of the way it works or what's special about it. What you did was aimed at challenging their perception of their environment as something changeless and reassuring. 

OE: Right. I wanted to get a fix on how the river is perceived in the city. Is it 

something dynamic or static? Something real or just a representation? I wanted to make it present again, get people to notice its movement and turbulence. For a few minutes there it was "hyperreal". In some respects the history of cities is the history of how they're represented and most of the time this is done by accentuating the classical, monumental structures that suggest power. The way we experience public spaces is more to do with the way representation and iconography influence our senses and our habits of seeing. A lot of people see urban space as an external image they have no connection with, not even physically.