Hélio Oiticica, Eden, 1969

Narrator: Oiticica created his second major installation in London in 1969. He called it Eden.

Donna De Salvo: Here you are able to lie inside of Nests, what he called Nests.

Narrator: Donna De Salvo.

Donna De Salvo: Literally, beds. He put together magazines, and here you'll find magazines that we have actually sourced from the area. Here's where he really, I think, created even more of an environment in which you encounter yourself within the work—very contemplative experience, a sense of play. You can lie in the nest. You can read the books, you can listen.

So the totality of this experience is really what you bring to it and what you will bring as you walk through, as you lie in the nest, as you think, as you imagine. In a sense, he gives you kind of prompts. The environment is what really is pushing you or stimulating your senses. And this is the sensorial—that is so much a part of Oiticica's work.

Elisabeth Sussman: The ones that are most vivid to me from the time that I was in it is the tent that you go in and you listen to music.

Narrator:  Elisabeth Sussman.

Elisabeth Sussman: The music that you hear is by Caetano Veloso. You put headphones on and you go into this tent, the reality of the museum where your experience is, is just blocked out. And I think that the experiences that he chooses are kind of these lovely things. You know that's why it's called Eden, because it imagines that if you have time, this is how you would use your time.