—The World Politics Costume and Cuddle Party, 2007

One-day event, performance, video, 2007, Pact Zollverein, Essen. A costume- and theme party under the heading “World Politics” is being prepared. Participants have access to the local theatre’s costume department and make-up artist. They spend the afternoon getting in character. Later, a professional cuddle-trainer arrives and hosts a cuddle party with those wo are interested. Participants are still dressed as, for example, George W. Bush, Borat and Angela Merkel, as Taliban and UN-peacekeepers, when the cuddle trainer guides them to express tenderness, respect and love in non-hierarchical ways.

—Blimp Derby

The First Long Island City Blimp Derby, 2003, installation, performance at Sculpture Center, New York
Various factions of the New York art world compete in a day-long derby with remote controlled miniature dirigibles. 

—Recent Sculptural Works, San Diego, 1992

An invitation for an exhibition has been sent out. It runs for one week. The location is specified as “The right front pocket of my pants”.  Whenever someone wants to see the exhibition, they can put their hand in the artist's pocket and touch a few miniature sculptures he carries in his pocket.

—Science Project, 1993

A Sunday morning picnic is arranged on a traffic island in a quiet area. As people meet and socialize, the artist arrives in his car pulling a small trailer. He connects a latex weather ballon from the local army surplus store to the exhaust pipe, places it on the trailer and starts circling the picnic. Once the ballon is filled with exhaust fumes, he disconnects it and replaces it with another one. By the time the picnic ends, there is a mass of inflated ballon surrounding the picnickers on all sides. They then are asked to help get rid of the balloons and take them with them and dispose of them as they see fit. One woman takes her ballon to gas station and asks them what she should do with it. Whenever one of the ballon breaks, a dense black plume of smoke rises. 

—Miscellaneous

—Walking on the Water, performance, Santa Barbara Beach, 1993 

In advance of the performance, announcements appeared in the local press stating that Olav Westphalen was planning to cross the Pacific Ocean on a home-made contraption. The audience was jovial and watched the preparations - helium balloons being inflated, Styrofoam floatation shoes being strapped on—in joyful anticipation. But it became obvious almost immediately that the equipment was useless. It had never been tested. For a while, the failed attempts to walk on the water were appreciated as slapstick. There was some laughter and applause for the more spectacular pratfalls, but soon the bulk of the audience lost interest. The few who remained, saw Westphalen’s continued efforts first as annoying, then as irresponsible and as a danger to his safetey. After about an hour, the last remaining spectators decided to act and “saved” him. 

—Even Steven, 2012, Performance

Choreography by Marcus Baldemar, stage curtain Tamara Henderson und Carl Palm, curated by Diana Baldon at , Index –The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm

Audience members are handed an index (!) card and a small bell. They are asked to note the exact amount of cash they are carrying on the card, which is then collected. The performance starts as a low-key interaction between Olav Westphalen and the audience. They are asked to ring their bells whenever they experience strong feelings. People start producing soft, jingling sounds. Westphalen sprays pheromones into the air to see if this will impact people’s emotions. The sound of bells increases. Lights are turned off. For a minute everybody sits in complete darkness, occasionally jingling their bells. Abruptly, the lights come back on as “Let Me Entertain You” by Robbie Williams pumps from the sound system. Westphalen reappears on stage, now wearing a cocktail jacket and a bow tie. He launches into a rather cynical comedy monologue about the local art world, culminating in jokes about Justin Bieber trying to have sex with a panda bear. The audience laughs at some of the jokes. At some point, Westphalen breaks character and confesses how hard it is to be a comedian, to make fun of people all the time, and says that he would really like to create something beautiful instead. He asks Marcus Baldemar, a professional dancer, to join him on stage. Baldemar performs a modern dance improvisation to Arvo Pärt’s “Tabula Rasa,” a much-dreaded cliché among practitioners of modern dance. Baldemar dances with great skill. The audience is entranced. But then Westphalen interrupts him and asks if he could dance along with him. Baldemar agrees, indifferently. Westphalen tries to follow his moves. After a while, Westphalen interrupts again, noting that Baldemar dances a lot better than him and that this makes it hard to achieve harmony in their dance. He asks if he could even out their physical abilities. He uses a yoga strap to limit the range of Baldemar’s motions. The dance starts over, only to be interrupted again after a while. This time, Westphalen comments on the fact that Baldemar can jump much higher than him and land much more softly. He gives Baldemar a pair of wooden clogs to wear. This pattern of dance, interruption, and corrective measures continues until Baldemar is dancing in clogs and carrying a bucket of rocks, with his legs and arms strapped together. Thus disabled, Baldemar completes his dance and receives a warm applause. The event ends with Westphalen announcing that the organizers have calculated the average amount of cash the audience members are carrying. He suggests that upon leaving everybody can either leave the money they carry in excess of the average in a jar by the exit or, if they carry less than the average amount, take as much money from the jar as they need to reach that figure. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” he asks, “if for once, just tonight, we all had exactly the same? Just to see what that would be like.” He is handed a folded paper by one of the organizers of the event and from it reads the average amount of cash being carried by the members of the audience. But, as someone claimed to be carrying fifty million Swedish crowns, the average has come out extremely high, and nobody ends up leaving any money in the jar. 

Even Steven has been performed in specifically adapted versions at Art Brussels and as part of High Desert Test Sites, in Crown King, Arizona, both in 2013. At the Crown King Saloon, a mixed audience of locals, hunters, outdoors people, and traveling art appreciators took the invitation to even out their cash holdings more seriously.The cash jar was used by nearly everybody. The evening ended in a raucous karaoke party and with the cash jar empty.

—Meet the Tigers, 2001, Video

The artists participates in a training session of the first division hockey team, Brynäs, from Gävle, Sweden. He asks the team to act out a number of slapstick scenes with him, and he then insists on being part of a scrimmage game. He is injured immediately.