Superflex

Short Abstract

This presentation will be about SUPERFLEX’ background, the motivations for their practice, and how it examines interspecies living, climate change and economic power dynamics. In the presentation there will thus be both a retrospect focus on previous artworks and a focus on works from 2019 and onwards, this could be works like the big architectural structure ‘Dive-In’ (2019), an installation that functions as a drive-in cinema for humans, but will become infrastructure for marine life when sea levels rise and ‘Investment Bank Flowerpots’ (2021), ceramic models of the corporate headquarter buildings operated by twenty of the world’s largest investment banks. Each model serves as flower pots for hallucinogenic plants. The work shrinks large-scale, prominent architectural structures into small-scale objects of everyday use, transforming symbols of domineering power into tranquil flowerpots with which one can form a new, domestic and even symbiotic relationship.

Short Bio

SUPERFLEX was founded in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, and Rasmus Rosengren Nielsen. Conceived as an expanded collective, SUPERFLEX has consistently worked with a wide variety of collaborators, from gardeners to engineers to audience members. Engaging with alternative models for the creation of social and economic organisation, works have taken the form of energy systems, beverages, sculptures, copies, hypnosis sessions, infrastructure, paintings, plant nurseries, contracts, and public spaces.

Working in and outside the physical location of the exhibition space, SUPERFLEX has been engaged in major public space projects since their award-winning Superkilen opened in 2011. These projects often involve participation, involving the input of local communities, specialists, and children. Taking the idea of collaboration even further, recent works have involved soliciting the participation of other species. SUPERFLEX has been developing a new kind of urbanism that includes the perspectives of plants and animals, aiming to move society towards interspecies living. For SUPERFLEX, the best idea might come from a fish.