Olafur Eliasson and CIRCA debut original digital art exclusively on WeTransfer

As part of WeTransfer’s year-long guest curatorship with the celebrated Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, it helps to unveil Lifeworld, a landmark series of five site-specific original works created in collaboration with CIRCA, an independent art and culture platform. 

Eliasson, internationally renowned for addressing how we co-create our worlds through art, is transforming several of the world’s most iconic urban and digital screens into expansive abstractions. Having premiered in London, Lifeworld will continue to appear every evening at 20:24 until December 31 on Piccadilly Lights in London, K-Pop Square in Seoul and Limes Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. Additionally, it can be seen throughout November in Times Square, New York, as part of Times Square Arts’ Midnight Moment series.

Acting as the fifth screen and exclusive digital partner to Circa, WeTransfer will bring the commision to life on its unique full-screen file sharing platform, allowing more than 80 million monthly active users to directly engage with a bespoke version of the artwork. Lifeworld as a whole marks the first work from Eliasson under his recently-announced guest curatorship of WeTransfer. 

Olafur Eliasson said: “Lifeworld explores how soft abstraction – images that are intentionally undefined and open to our personal interpretations – can reveal our place in the world in 2024. Sites like Piccadilly, Times Square and WeTransfer are enormously impressive spectacles all in their own way, with their advertising screens that usually display crisp, sensational imagery. It’s a thrill; but the environment also determines my actions – driving me mostly to spend or to consume. Lifeworld shows the immediate site anew and its hazy qualities may prompt questions. If you are suddenly confronted with the reality of having a choice, you might ask what cities, lives and environments do we want to inhabit? And how do I want to take part in them?” 

Holly Fraser, VP Content at WeTransfer & WePresent added: “With our attention spans under constant pressure due to endless content, it’s increasingly rare to come across original ideas that stop you in you tracks, force a curious second look, and that —at its very best—allow you to see a tired world through new eyes. But this is the transformative power of art, and it’s a power that Olafur Eliasson has mastered through his multilayered practice that is designed to spark conversations. At WeTransfer and WePresent, we commission original projects that champion creativity and have the potential to inspire tens of millions of creators that use our service every day. Partnering with Olafur Eliasson and CIRCA to put Lifeworld on a global scale, we are excited to bring the power of his artwork to millions of more people across the globe.”

Lifeworld appears at a time marked by polarizing public debate: during the final days of the US presidential election and throughout the month of November, the public artwork will be presented synchronized across Times Squares’ 92 screens, in collaboration with the world’s largest and longest-running digital public art programme, Midnight Moment. Eliasson speaks to the importance of public space for “hosting a plurality of perspectives, co-created with whoever is there at that point in time”. Following other major public interventions by Eliasson, such as Ice Watch (2014), which drew attention to environmental and social issues, Lifeworld calls on us today to look at ourselves as individuals, to contemplate who we are and where we are, here and now.

Lifeworld by Olafur Eliasson (CIRCA 20:24 - Season IV Programme)

1 October until 31 December 2024

• 20:24 BST/GMT ➳ London, Piccadilly Lights

• 20:24 CET ➳ Berlin, Limes, Kurfürstendamm

• 20:24 KST ➳ Seoul, COEX K-Pop Square 

• 11:57 EST ➳ New York, Times Square*

• 24/7 ➳ WeTransfer, Worldwide*

*Lifeworld will appear every evening throughout November in Times Square, New York, presented in collaboration with the world’s largest and longest-running digital public art programme, Midnight Moment. *Lifeworld will be available to view (1 October - 31 December 2024) on WeTransfer, inviting a global public to experience the project from anywhere in the world. To discover more, click here.

To view the exhibition map, click here.

ABOUT OLAFUR ELIASSON The works of Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967) explore the relevance of art in the world at large. Since 1997, his wide-ranging solo shows – featuring installations, paintings, sculptures, photography, and film – have appeared in major museums around the globe. His art is driven by his interests in perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of self and community. 

Eliasson is internationally-renowned for his public installations that challenge the way we perceive and co-create our environments. In 2003, he made ‘The weather project’, a glowing indoor sun shrouded in mist at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London. In 2008, Eliasson constructed four expansive artificial waterfalls along the Manhattan and Brooklyn shorelines for ‘The New York City Waterfalls’. He has also explored art’s potential to address climate change: for ‘Ice Watch’, he brought large blocks of free-floating glacial ice to the city centres of Copenhagen in 2014, Paris in 2015, and London in 2018. Passers-by could touch fragments of the Greenlandic glacial ice and witness its fragility as it disappeared before them. On the occasion of the 2020 German Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Eliasson created ‘Earth Speakr’ together with children around the world and support from the German Federal Foreign Office; the global artwork invites kids to speak up for the planet. In 2022, Eliasson opened ‘Shadows travelling on the sea of the day’, a cluster of large site-specific mirror pavilions that draw attention to the delicate habitat of the Qatari desert outside Doha.

In 2012, Eliasson started the social business Little Sun, and in 2014, he and Sebastian Behmann founded Studio Other Spaces, an office for art and architecture. In 2019, Eliasson was named UNDP Goodwill Ambassador for climate action. In 2023, he received the Praemium Imperiale from the Japanese imperial family for outstanding contributions to the development, promotion, and progress of the arts.

Located in Berlin, Studio Olafur Eliasson comprises a large team of craftspeople, architects, archivists, researchers, administrators, cooks, art historians, and specialised technicians. https://olafureliasson.net | @studioolafureliasson

ABOUT WETRANSFER & WEPRESENT WeTransfer is the simplest way to share ideas, collaborate with teams and earn money, all in one platform. By offering fast, easy and sustainable tools, we help tens of millions of creators, entrepreneurs and businesses globally to make an impact through creativity. WeTransfer is a long-time champion of using business as a force for good and a certified B Corporation™.

WeTransfer’s Academy Award-winning arts platform WePresent acts as the company’s cultural torchbearer to a monthly audience of 3 million in 190 countries. Collaborating with emerging young talent to renowned artists such as Marina Abramovic, Riz Ahmed, FKA twigs and Solange Knowles, WePresent showcases the best in art, photography, film, music, literature and more, championing diversity in everything it does. The platform’s commissions range from editorial features to films, photography series, events, installations and social media activations, with an aim to offer a fresh take on the magic and mystery of creative ideas. https://wepresent.wetransfer.com | @wepresent @wetransfer