Bodies Moved, Moved Bodies A Phenomenological Study of the Embodied Experience in Olafur Eliasson’s Installations Your blind passenger and Your negotiable panorama

Sammanfattning: This thesis provides an analysis of the embodied experience in Olafur Eliasson’s installations Your blind passenger (2010) and Your negotiable panorama (2006). The empirical material was observed in 2011 at ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj, Denmark, where the two installations were located at the time. The author argues that the experience of a work of art is done through the beholder’s entire body and certain notions can alter the quality of this embodied experience. The study explores how engagement and interaction with an artwork can get influenced by the intertwining relationship, created between the artwork and the beholder in different levels. In the process, the research provides a philosophical discussion about phenomenological methodology toward artworks, while integrating the philosophy with the author’s own experience of the empirical material, and Eliasson’s approach for his art. The findings investigate methodological view about experiencing and perceiving works of art, proposing a new concept called phenomenological sphere, which consists of, but is not limited to characteristics and properties of beholders, artwork, and the spatiotemporal surrounding. The thesis concludes that the phenomenological sphere is what determines the extent and quality of the embodied experience; but acknowledges that it is not a rigid notion, and can change depending on each intertwining component of the experience.