 Hi, everybody. I'm Carol Becker, Dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia University, and I'm also writer. And of course, this is Oliver Lysen, who is, I don't want him to watch me while I say this because he's quite modest, but I think truly one of the most interesting artists working today. And I say that he's Danish, Icelandic, he lives in Copenhagen. He works in Berlin. He has a complex life, but he also is a very complex and conceptual thinker. And he's an artist, of course. He's a fantastic thinker, and he approaches problems as a philosopher, and as a poet, and as a designer, and as an architect, and as an innovator, and of course as a social entrepreneur. And I think it's probably what it takes to be an artist now in the 21st century, that one, to deal with the world as it is, and the complexity of the questions that the world has posed to us and that we've posed to the world, I think you need all those facilities to make important work. And he surely has made important work. Because he is one of the crystal awardees this year, and because his project, The Little Sun, is probably the main reason, his entire body of work, but also The Little Sun is the main reason for the award this year. We're going to start with talking about The Little Sun. So I think we have an image. There it is. Oh, uh-oh. Where's Little Sun? There's Little Sun. Okay. So, Oliver, I think that you should maybe give people some understanding of how you evolve the concept of The Little Sun. And I know that the initial idea, because I've read you speaking about this in interviews, was some real poetic desire to capture light and to be able to move light from one place to another. And you worked closely with a light engineer to actualize it. So can you talk a little bit about the impetus for it and the process of creating it? Yes, absolutely, Caroline. Thank you for this quite ambitious introduction. I'm in such a good company with you, Caroline. See, The Little Sun started really in collaboration with a scientist, an engineer who then became a solar-obsessed engineer. And as we know that solar panels got better and better, batteries got better and better, and cheaper and cheaper solar panels got cheaper and cheaper, LEDs got better and better and cheaper and cheaper. So a lot of sort of curves in the head of this scientist, Fred, who's I think here. Fred, can you put your hand up? Oh, right there. Oh, that's why I don't see you. So, and Fred and I spoke about that we had both traveled in places where there was no access to energy and having no light brings you to illuminate your house with kerosene or petroleum. And that creates a number of side effects such as health related, environmentally very bad, of course, and, you know, fire hazard and all of that. So we had this idea of, you know, focusing on, well, what does it mean if you not only have light, but you also harvest light? And what's the kind of potential of making people their own power station? So it goes a little bit beyond just sort of the functional solution to our challenge. And this is how the little son looks as you see on the picture. So we started talking about aspiration and inspiration. And as we all know, the climate crisis is, you know, very present in the sense that it's also very abstract. We have the data. We know sort of what one needs to know, but it's still very difficult to translate all what we know into all what we do. And this, of course, is a big discussion. But this idea of making energy tangible, making it, you know, something that you actually have a relationship with, sort of demystified, make it non esoteric somehow was an ambition. And I thought a lot about the design. And this is why I wanted the design to reflect a kind of positive energy, something that makes you happy. So we did a number of tests in rural Africa. This was in Ethiopia and south of Addis Ababa, where we, you know, we showed people what essentially looks like a black ice hockey puck. Frederick was there, and it had a sort of a string tied to it with nice colors. And then people said, oh, lamp is not a bad idea, but the string is really nice. And then, of course, immediately realized, well, why don't we design it so that the lamp itself and the communication with the message sense becomes about empowering, but not empowering in terms of, you know, when you wear it, it's not like, oh, I don't have any power at home. And then people see me, they go, like, oh, look, this person has a lamp around the neck. This is a person who does not have power. In another, we wanted to make it so like, wow, this person is wearing like a piece of jewelry. This is energy. The energy is, you know, the future and so on and so forth. So this whole idea of aspiration, let's call it the psychology underneath this shape became very important. That's kind of how we started. And obviously, we were incredibly stupid, as everybody in Davos knows, because we made very high quality, and we sold it at a very low price, which is exactly the opposite of the rest of the world, which makes very poor quality. And they said a very high price. And in that, and there, there we are now. So the, the model, and we have not, we worked on a number of business models, and it seems to be that we are, we are forced to have all in place at the same time, because we are now in 12 African countries. We just crossed half a million produce lands. We, we are close to be selling the half a millionth land. We have been selling them for three years. One third of those are what we call on grid in the western world. Typically sold at a higher price, maybe $25, 22 euro or something like that. And the profit from that drives this as a business, not a relief, not an aid, no micro-entrepreneur, private sector, anything that drives local business people. And we deliver then in Africa at cost price, which is currently, I think it's $4.85 or something like this. And that's absolutely the totally pressed down cost price, still having the very high quality. And this is how we work. And we are not, you know, we, we, we are very good at getting the message. We are delivering a lot of lamps. We are, you know, in Singapore, it's done really great. We have 120 employees, two of which bought a car. So, and so it's going quite well. The, the challenges is of course like huge. One of the reasons why I'm in Davos is of course to talk about these challenges, business challenges, infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa, retailers, who are the retailers of the future. So anyway, this is it. And what everybody told me, then I'll stop my little introduction. Everybody told us, and now we are a team of 23 people working in Berlin and a few hundred in Africa. They said, this is great. We love it. It feels great, too. Right? It's incredible. But this is much nicer, they say, because as we have been hearing on all almost all the panels, the digital revolution. This is the first I'm seeing this live. Yeah, so this is not on my this. We kickstarted it last year. And you know what knows, this is like a phony on kickstart. You know, that's how it works, right? So then you sort of pretend that you actually have it. And we didn't. But now we bloody have it here. And what it is, is a mobile phone charger and has a USB and it works also with light because it's going to essentially be the same people, probably a little more fluent once. But what this is, is currently, and then probably in a week, somebody are beating us. But this is currently the strongest and the best and highest quality solar powered mobile phone charger, smartphones, small tablet, not full, but you know, a handful of small phones. But the point is, we are producing this as $20. So it's an incredible high quality. And finally, we are seeing something where the profit margin might allow us to reach the people Sub-Saharan Africa, bringing a more robust profit there. But this is so beautiful. So I want, I want to say two things. One is I've been waiting or three things. One, I've been waiting for this because I watched the Kickstarter and I was, I couldn't wait to see it. And it's as beautiful as the light. So I'm happy to see that. But the other is, I want you to, I think what you've made available to all of us who have been involved in Little Sun and buying them as gifts and getting them for everyone, is this idea that there are 1.6 billion people in the world who are off the grid. I think you've made that so visible and palpable to people with this project. So it's been very pedagogical as well. And then I want to ask you this. I watched an interview that you and Frederick did at MIT with all engineers in the audience. And someone asked you a question. They said, why do you need artists? And it wasn't a hostile question, although I have heard that happen in life, but it wasn't that. It was, we're all engineers, why couldn't engineers have done the Little Sun? So I asked you as an artist, like, what is the art, not just the way it looks, but the motivation? Or where does the artist come in to these products? You know? Well, I think as a person from the cultural sector, and I think because I don't think it's really only artists, I think it's people who work, let's say poetry, theater, music. I think we think in different manners. And you know, we are the people who say that creativity reaches further than efficiency. Obviously, we won't, we don't have to polarize them, but you know, we are the sort of non-Mikincian people in the world, the last ones, probably. So the thing is, I think this idea that the non-quantifiable success criteria actually carries this further is also about believing in having an inner life, you could say. So it's very much about saying right there when we were out testing with that puck. And then I sometimes said, you know what, with a translator, right? So we're the south of Addis Ababa. I said, listen, is actually also a work of art. And then people say, what do you mean it's a work of art? It's a work of art? I said, I'm an artist. Then I said, oh, is it like in the church? And I was like, no, that's not what I was thinking. But then I said, yes, it's like in the church. And then they said, oh, it's amazing. The thing is, we tend without thinking about it, we allow the surroundings to functionalize us, right? We always think in the efficiency, practicality and so on. The potential of course lays in the unpredictable use of it. Another person said, you know, we said, oh, you can bring it to your cow in the morning when you're milking. And the person said, you know what, I've been doing that in darkness for 40 years, but now I'm so old. I just have to go to the toilet on the road. I won't tell that to anybody, but I'll just tell it to you, he said. And I'm so afraid of falling, because if I break my hip, my family falls apart. So that's what I'm going to use it for. And I would never have, you know, I can't tell people, oh, and so the use is, it's about trusting people to be smart enough to make up their own life and not selling it in a condescending tell you what to do and who you are. So I think that's a cultural sector asset. I think being a cultural protagonist, I also enjoy another element, which is maybe just worth, which is also more general. I enjoy civic trust. It's good to leave it hanging like that, right? Civic trust. What is that? Well, actually, it's good. You just helped me to go to my next question, which is about public space. And I want, we don't have that much time. So I think we need to start going into these other projects, even though I would love, I have about 50 more things I'd like to talk to you about. But let's talk a little bit about the public sphere. And what I think is really not just your new role in the civic society, but many artists are working now in public space, which is much more complex way to work because it's much more unpredictable. And the response of people and the audience becomes much more of a participant. So I want you to talk about these projects. I'm going to hope this works. Okay. So we start with the Weather Project. And as you're talking about them, we have four that we're going to go through pretty quickly. But could you talk about, I think, sort of what was somewhat exhilarating and also terrifying about doing projects on the scale because they're an enormous scale? So I think you have to describe just quickly to people. This is the Turban Hall at Tate Modern in London some 13, 14 years ago. A big sun, so actually half a sun, the other half is in a mirror in the ceiling. So a very large mirror and a bit of haze or fog or, you know, some theater, smoking mirror we call it, right? So smoke and mirror. Anyway, so what was difficult was I couldn't see it before the opening, except the day before. And you know, I took the risk of doing a major thing, which should it not work, would have been the end of my career. You know, how these things are. You would have failed big. Yeah, that's a big statement to do, not knowing whether people or, you know, normally a painter, right? Painting students, nah, I'm not going to show that to anybody. They throw it out. I don't have that luxury. On the other side, I am so confident that a space can host a diverse experience and still sustain a sharing or a shared experience. Of course, this is not a big trend in today's world, that if people are disagreeing, normally that leads to, well, if you don't agree, you should leave, not just Switzerland, but like Europe and essentially not come back. So the polarizing nature of our society doesn't really cater for a lot of inclusion. So one of the ambitious in with these projects that we are looking at, whether they were all based on, well, how do we actually facilitate a space, semi-public in this case, which allows people to be in conflict and still experience that conflict as an asset, right? As a potential, like you and I disagree, and we become even better friends, right? So what do you see the conflict in the piece? Well, a person said, oh, this makes me totally want to do yoga, right? I'm going to lay down, I'm going to do my little thing, be contemplative, the other person, no, it's like apocalypse, it's the end of the world, I'm depressing, it's scary, I am so, you know, I feel, I'm full of fear. And then they go away from there and they said, oh, that was the best thing we did today. Do you see, so go into a parliament, right, and see two parties come out of the, out of the sort of room at the end of the day saying, well, this was a great day. And so the principle is, I think the cultural sector has it in it as a methodology to share or to host a conflict in a potentially productive way. That's why I think, I think there should be much more cultural protagonists here in this sort of, let's face it, I mean, the world is becoming very populistic, right? So what I'm talking about is the opposite of populism or nationalism, if you want. But the other thing is that people knew this was fake and yet they responded to it in some way as if we were a real son. And people are lying down, basking in this light, knowing that it's a creation. It's not really fake, I mean, it's a fake real. But it's not everybody can sort of see it's just plastic smoke and mirror. So it's not fake would be if I pretended it was the real son. So that's what we call, you know, capitalism, right? So no, no, I'm not trying to create an illusion, right? I'm not trying to fool people. Actually, I'm showing people, oh, you're so bloody smart. And listen, I tell people, I trust you. And then they go, wow, bloody hell, somebody's trusting me. It's like so different than going into a shopping mall. But knowing, but all I was trying to say about this is this sort of phenomenon of knowing that something is inauthentic and but but not having anyone hiding that fact, and yet still being able to have a really authentic experience is an interesting it's interesting. Yes, but the truth is the real son is as well, let's just say the climate is not really I mean, it's also kind of manmade now, right? It's the Anthropocene the climate that is when I was a child, the climate was sort of beyond human reach. And now in my life, climate became the consequence of human. And this is so it is also fake. You know, there's nothing not fake. There's nothing really you could say. I'm sorry, Carol. Maybe our inner something is real. No, no, of course, I just say fake is also real. Then we have that's what I'm saying. Yeah. Okay, we agree. All right. Cheers. Let's move on to I was saying to Oliver that this next project was the hottest summer in New York ever when this project opened in New York. And what we would do was just take boat rides to go and look at these waterfalls. And it was so wonderful and spectacular. But this was one of the most I don't amazing projects New Yorkers seen the scale of it. So can you describe? So this is part of the mayor's office Mayor Bloomberg and his confidence that culture actually bring about aspiration in public space. And so I have to say that a part of that came from public art fund, great group of people, Mayor's office, very committed fundraising structures and a lot of people pitching in with a lot of type of talent. So that's really a very New York thing is amazing. The city as we know is so amazing. It was very Bloomberg thing to you know, and and essentially to make a long story short, if you look at a waterfall, you surprisingly also see the distance that you're looking. You're not just seeing the water falling because by looking at the speed of the water, you can tell how high it is. Do you know what I mean? So if it falls very slow, it's a big waterfall. It falls very fast. It's very small. And so so subconsciously, if you're in front of a landscape here in the Swiss Alps, and you go like, oh, I have no idea how high these mountains are. It's so surreal. I'm not from here. Don't understand it. Let's just for a moment say there's no cows and small sort of cheese huts everywhere. And you look and you go like, oh, look, there's a waterfall and there's tiny waterfall falling so slow. And you go, oh, it's really big. So there's what is called, I think, spatial synchronization with the body or there is the embodiment of space. And this is how I work with it. How do we give public space its dimension back? Because once you have the dimension, you can actually meet people in it. If you have a fully privatized, if you don't mind, you know, represented a rendered, a private rendered space, which means public space is just what is left over when all the private sectors has eaten what they need, then you suddenly don't have any depth. So it's a physically speaking, right? Do you know what I mean? So and you can't meet a person. I can't meet you Carol if there is no depth to the space. If you are a bloody rendering, I am not going to become, I will not going to become friends. So it was about these projects, of course it's about nature and culture and all the city stuff and so on. It's also about people. Well, how and in what way do we actually get together and meet? Do we trust each other? But this was so iconic with the Brooklyn Bridge, which is such an amazing symbolic space in New York, especially for someone like me who actually grew up in Brooklyn. The aspiration was, can you get over the bridge in your life to Manhattan? You know because Brooklyn was very working class and Manhattan was where culture and art were. So if you're someone like me, your whole life in your mind, you were thinking, how do I get across that bridge? So the waterfall that to call so much attention to it was something, something fabulous. Under the, you know, there's people under the bridge and the under bridges are not so privileged. And there's a lot of dimensions that under the, you know, in Brooklyn, don't go to down under the Brooklyn Bridge area. And so there's, so there's a lot of say I was very lucky there was a bridge above my waterfall, I could say, because the bridge is so truly remarkable. So sort of a non-site, a forgotten area. Except for people like me for whom it was essential. It's full of poetry, yeah. Yeah, it is. It is. Okay, so here is one of my, also one of my favorite projects, it's called Ice Watch. And was this, this was the Paris one, I think? Yeah, it was just last, well, isn't that just about a month ago, right? A little longer, Paris, COP 21. Can you explain this, how you made this even happen? So when the IPCC scientists met in Copenhagen a year ago, announcing the report scientific paper, I told them, listen, great paper, probably more important than, or at least as important as the Bible a few thousand years ago, right? So that's the kind of paper we are talking about. The only problem is nobody's going to read it. It's also, it's impossible to understand anyway, right? For normal people like me. So I said why don't we translate the scientific report into actually into space so that people basically can read it. So you spend two minutes with this ice, then you read the whole paper, right? Because it's so touching, it's so amazing this ice glacier in Greenland, Ilulisat, East Greenland, amazing glacier, the one that all the sort of politicians go to, to do selfies, the selfie glacier it's called. And, and we shipped that great people, Greenland long, to make a long story short, I called, no money, of course, I called Bloomberg again. Ah, Bloomberg, you are, you are into this climate stuff, right? So, and then he said, ah, it's amazing. But also Fabius of, of his under all the stress they went through with the terror and the traumatizing time, Fabius of his, the foreign minister in person, he said, well listen, with this we have to make happen. And it was so amazing because everybody pitched in a lot of effort to get these ice blocks non, in a, in a, in a solid state to Paris from Greenland. And we worked with a sort of sustainable group in England to make sure we didn't sort of pollute more than sending our school class from Paris to Greenland. So, and back with plane, right? So that's the kind of footprint we had. And, and it was unique because as you know you walk up to ice and then you go, ah, ice, look how beautiful. Then you put your hand on it and you go, ah, it's really cold. And you see how you kind of knew that, but the body somehow did not have that knowledge in it. And suddenly you connect your body with your brain. And that's what I mean, I mean, obviously that is what art essentially can do, but it's also what a, a, sort of a report can do. A lot of things we know is actually not translated into the type of knowledge that foster action. We know it all, right? These, these are the gestures, these are symbolic gestures that I think people really respond to in a sensorial way, which is another really important aspect of what artists are capable of, which is to circumvent the mind and just go right to the emotion and right to the senses. So that's why the, the response is so physical. There are photos of people hugging the ice. Yeah, it's very interesting. See now it gives a little detail, but I think it's incredibly important, especially when there is a COP 21, that we are all a little stressed, right? We're nervous. They say, oh my God, this is so not going to work out. Everything is like, who are these people anyway, right? I mean, how we do, we trust them and as much as we want to trust UN, it's not exactly like UN is good at translating what they're doing into things that normal people understand, right? And then you see people suddenly being, and I would say, hosted, actually held by public space. So this is ice in public space. It's not just ice, it's Paris, it's the street, it's the time, it's the knowledge that there is a COP 21, there's a room only a few kilometers away, full of people trying to sort out a global agreement. And the ice just made people so touched under these circumstances that they went up to it and then they were, I would call it, they were mirrored emotionally. And they just said, they could suddenly, let go, right? They said, oh, this is verbalizing something on my behalf that I was trying to get my words to say, but I haven't quite sorted out how to say it, right? And it's very interesting because suddenly people felt I identify with this space, this space is me, I am Paris. But that this deep longing that people have for the natural world and also for Earth as we know it, that this real fear that I think many people have of the change that's happening and that we can't stop it. Because we don't know how to deal with the fear we kind of suppress it. Right. But now you give people away to experience it without terror. Yeah. I wouldn't call it trauma management, but there is a degree of that. No, I'm serious. There is something where, because what you feel is like, well, somebody saw me. I'm not alone. I'm a part of society. I actually matter. I'm going to bloody do something. I am worth something. I'm not just some worthless little piece of something. I'm actually a global citizen. They've just given me, I have very little time left. Oh, yeah. Go on. No, wait. So we're going to end with something very beautiful and very positive, which is this circle bridge. Oh, what happened? Wait. Here we go. In Copenhagen, and it's really an extraordinary, an extraordinary creation. So can you talk a little about it and what it does for the city? Yeah. Half of what I do, around half of what I do as an artist is actually with public space. I work with a lot of mayor, civic infrastructure, city planning, and so on. And it's interesting. This is the city, inner city of Copenhagen, the harbour area. And a foundation that is private to collaborating with the city managed to pull a little money together to do a bridge. And it's all within a bigger bicycle environmental scheme of Copenhagen that the city has this green ambition. So it's amazing. I said, let's not be so functional and just get people from one side to the other. Let's slow them down and make a little friction, right? Let's not. Why? I mean, they're so efficient anyway in Copenhagen. So this, as you can see, it's a bridge where you have to sort of, to a degree, pause. There's 4,000 people crossing it every day pedestrians and bicycles. So it's very crowded. And then it also, I think, allows for this imagination that Copenhagen once was full of ships. And as you can see, it sort of has this feeling that there's these sort of boats next to each other allowing you to go dry footed, like jumping from a boat to a boat. And every boat is like a little universe. That's the story behind it. But it's also an architectural sort of wonder, isn't it? Because doesn't it open? Oh, yeah. Then it has a very sweet, it's a rotator, a pivot's around the center mass there. And then the boat owners, you know, that's a robust community in Copenhagen. They get a very celebrational, celebrate, maybe celebrate, sort of brain, you know, celebrate. Anyway, that's a fantastic way. I think we have one minute. Do we have one minute? Okay. One minute. Can you talk about the importance of beauty in the work? Because everything you make is so extraordinarily important, I think, but also really very beautiful. Well, I think we shouldn't leave beauty in the hands or, you know, in the hands of the, we need to kind of, how should I say, occupy beauty, right? We need to take it back because beauty has become commodified you know, essentialized into some sort of trade phenomenon. I think beauty holds the potential of bringing people together like we talked about, allowing people to identify with a space in which they didn't feel welcome before. So beauty is something much more complex than what you buy from a supermodel in a little can with a profit margin of a thousand. So I think the idea of beauty is for me really about people and not about objects. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Carol.