Your Blind Passenger
How I experienced Your Blind Passenger by Olafur Eliasson
Entering the foyer of Arken it was already slightly blurry and smoky due to the open architecture and rooms of the museum. The artwork was located in the long central room of the museum and the subtle blurriness expanded my curiousity and interest for the artwork. The smoke inhabited the entire space in the museum and somehow the constant subtle presence of the smoke affected my entire experience of the museum. The presence of the smoke before even entering the artwork underlined that the experience in relation to the artwork already began when entering the museum. The context and space was optimal. It stretched out the time in which I actually experienced the artwork to begin much earlier than I initially realised.
The wooden construction of Your Blind Passenger made a visual humble impression at the same time emphasizing that the true aesthetic experience would be in the tunnel. Then the first encounter with the artwork, moving through the from one end to the other. Alone finding the doors to the tunnel in the small dark preperational room was challenging and here already my sense of motion was sharpened. As this was accomplished a blinding intense white light reduce most of my visual ability and a dense, warm smoke duvet surrounds me. My visual experience of the initial 4 meters was as if I was located and moving around in a white piece of paper- Slowly my eyes starts to adjust to the light environment and I recognise my own arm strechted out in front of me.
Surrounding me I hear other participants, laughing, shouting, talking, squealing and startled outburst. I experience an abnormally high intensity of the sounds, my body responds instantaneously – my nervous system is highly alert to prevent going directly into the other participants.
My stretched out arm is raised in front of me functioning as a shield and initial protection as I slowly move one foot in front of the other. In the white area I get in close contact with two other participants. One reaches out as he senses my presence and gets a hold of my furjacket that I carry with me. We responded with startled laughs – my heartbeat speeded up and down again. Afterwards I felt a twitching anticipation for the next possible encounter.
The experience of the ground under my feet is intensified through my movement and I sense the slightest shifts in my sense of balance. I have no sense of the temporal expansion while moving through the artwork. My experience and focus was entirely on the bodily sensed information that the artwork presented for me.
Didn’t read part I, II or III
Kaputte 