WeUsed.To
A project by Studio Olafur Eliasson, Berlin, and The Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University, Denmark
WeUsed.To is an invitation to share reflections on the COVID-19 pandemic experience and contribute to an online participatory experiment.
People from all over the world are invited to submit statements to the website, which are then displayed at random on the platform. The growing collection of statements –sent from Germany, Denmark, Poland, Italy, the United States, Ukraine, Indonesia, South Korea, India, and many more countries in Europe, North and South America, and Asia – reflect the global scale of the pandemic. COVID-19 is a majorly disruptive event. It has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world and is affecting communities everywhere. But it is not only the virus that is spreading. Emotions, uncertainty, facts, beliefs, and experiences are propagating fast and in many directions.
WeUsed.To was developed in spring 2020, during the lockdown in many parts of Europe and the United States. The project emerged within a larger on-going experimental framework – a five-year- long arts-and-science collaboration, called Experimenting, Experiencing, Reflecting (EER), initiated by Studio Olafur Eliasson and the Interacting Minds Center at Aarhus University, Denmark, and funded by the Carlsberg Foundation in Denmark. WeUsed.To was tested in physical, public space at Dokk1 public library, in Aarhus, in spring 2020.
Experimenting, Experiencing, Reflecting (EER) is founded upon experimentation. The experiments examine perception, decision-making, action, notions of togetherness, collaboration, and the transmission of knowledge.