Building Breathing / An art event by Dan Stockholm

Performative action at the exhibition Green Through and Through at the Eyal Ofer Pavilion

On Saturday, September 21, 2024, all external and internal windows and doors of the Eyal Ofer Pavilion will open at once. This action is the artwork Building Breathing by the artist Dan Stockholm (born 1982, Denmark). Like the act of inhaling and exhaling, the movement of air in and out will, momentarily, turn the pavilion into a living, dynamic body. This gesture will invite passersby on the street and in the adjacent Yaakov Garden to come inside, peek into the pavilion’s hidden spaces, and experience the exhibition Green Through and Through in a new manner. Building Breathing is a poetic and performative intervention in the architecture of art institutions that draws the senses’ attention to the spirit, history, and character of the building in question.

Dan Stockholm is a multidisciplinary artist. His works emerge from what he calls a “performative process”—a method that transforms his creations into vessels that convey the story of how they were made. His work Building Breathing has been performed at several art institutions in Denmark and Germany, including at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin ten years ago, curated by Olafur Eliasson and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga.

Building Breathing—a distinctly site- and time-specific artwork—is part of the Green Through and Through exhibition, which also addresses the particular location of a given site, its change over time, and the flow of light, air, sounds, people, and plants from the outside in. Illuminated by natural light, the exhibition looks outward and draws in works (by artists from Israel and abroad) whose essence is akin to that of parks and gardening.