SUPERFLEX
SUPERFLEX
CELEBRATING THE COLLECTIVE
Cover: One Two Three Swing! Al Ula 2020. Photo: Lance Gerber, courtesy of Desert X. Portrait: Daniel Stjerne
With The Danes!, 2002. Photo: Anders Sune Berg
As Close As We Get, 2022. Photo: Lars Hestbæk
It's a category we call ‘art as infrastructure’, in our thinking.
What's keeping you busy at the moment?
There are a lot of projects all the time at SUPERFLEX. I think the guys in the studio say we always have around 30 projects under way.
Some, of course, demand more focus time than others. But there are some very big solo shows coming up next year.
30 sounds like a big number, particularly given that you often have very large scale projects.
SUPERFLEX is something like 32 years old and our workload has been like this for, let's say, the last 15-20 years.
Some projects, for example a one-kilometer-long park, could take seven years to develop. Others, for example an exhibition, could happen in six months.
Do you have any control over the timescales? Do you intentionally mix it up?
I would like to say we intentionally mix it up, but it's also on demand. Of course, we also have our own long-term research that runs parallel to the commissioned work.
For example, our Super Reef. With this we are trying to restore 55 square kilometers of stone reef around Denmark. As you can imagine, 55 square kilometers is quite a grand endeavor. It's a category we call ‘art as infrastructure’, in our thinking.
How did you realize that there was a need for a massive reef off the Danish coast?
Seven or eight years ago, we were the expedition leader for a research vessel in the Pacific. We had been offered three years to decide where a research ship was going, through an organization called TBA21Academy. So we dived deep into the sea, trying to understand the ‘design preferences’ of those living in the sea.
Right now, sea levels are rising and Denmark is flat, so we are more or less in the same situation as they are in the South Pacific, even though it’s happening faster over there. Some of the Pacific Islands have already seen up to a one-meter rise in sea levels over the last 10 years.
Denmark is next, along with quite a few other low lying European countries.
Plus, Denmark particularly is very flat, we don't have mountains. Because of this, we harvested stones from the sea. Just as you trawl for fish with these big nets, you can also trawl the seabed. ‘Stone fishing’ it was called.
That stopped in the ‘80s, but one of the consequences are is that the sea is lacking oxygen, because if you don't have hard material for organisms to attach to, then they can’t produce oxygen, for us or for the sea. So you have a pretty serious change in the last five years, I would say.
Denmark has 404 islands. We are islanders. I was raised on an island, so it's very serious to us. This is a very long project.
So you want to rebuild a habitat that has been destroyed by stone fishing. Is it fixable?
It is fixable. Well, ‘fixable’ is probably not the right word. We can do a lot in the short term, but we have to change our behavior and our economic resource streams long term as well, because we need oxygen to survive.
Interspecies Campus, 2021. Photo: Torben Eskerod
Does the search for alternative economic models provide an overarching direction for your research and your work?
Economy plays an important role in just about everything. I'm not talking about capitalism or not here, more that we exchange and that we set value on everything as humans.
So, there's value put on everything from a human perspective and from a collective human perspective. This is not just a matter for economists or politicians to deal with. It deeply influences all of us.
And if you think - as we do - of art as infrastructure, as part of life and life as part of art, then naturally, we have always been very engaged in working with economic systems. Any system, all social systems, are constructed by humans, and therefore they can also be modified, changed, criticized, worked with and against...
So I wouldn't call them alternative, as such. For a long time now, we have believed in the concept of ‘engaged autonomy.’ We go into systems. And within systems, you can make change.
Flooded McDonald's, 2009.
Economy plays an important role in just about everything.
You’re gaining people's attention with art, which, as they engage with it, helps them to correct course. You're using a subtle approach there.
Absolutely, engaged autonomy means working within, and we do that through art. But art is many things. Of course, it’s museums, galleries and so forth, yet in our understanding, art is much more than that.
If you look into the origins of commissioning art, it goes way back. When someone needed visual representation of an idea or of an ideology, they would hire an artist to help with that, or someone creating a narrative.
That's where it begins. Then, as an artist, a visual artist, it is about form. What we do is tangible most of the time. You can relate to it, you can engage with it.
How would this inform something like your Superkilen park project?
That’s a big park in Copenhagen, it’s one kilometer long. And it's a very surprising park. There are no straight lines anymore. The lines snake around, creating different routes of movement, where you might encounter a
kind of bench you have never seen before, signage from other parts of the world, things like that.
These encounters make you pause and take stock. Whether you think of this park as art or not is not really relevant, particularly not in the public space. Of course, when we talk about it, it is art, but how other people think and talk about it depends on use.
A public work of that size will have so many people interacting with it, the amount of feedback must be huge?
That was our first very big commission. So naturally we learned a lot from it. But we already knew, through our more social and engaged practice, in exhibitions, shows and so on, that the most important thing was to create a sense of trust and to work with existing communities.
Not creating a community, but actually working with those that exist, making sure that there's trust built between us and the users. Not simply in the use of the final result, but also in the process of making. That’s how we have worked since the beginning.
Recently, we completed a big project in Billund, the capital of Lego, which we called Play Contract , where we worked with 121 children to build a playground for grown-ups, designed by children.
We set the initial conditions, how to engage with them, then they took off, feeding us with input. Then we fed back. And eventually, it became this gigantic park, a manifestation of a collective process.
For this project we were the concept makers, as with Superkilen , but we involved playfulness and perspectives that we would never have been able to develop independently. So we are also curators of public space, in a way.
The most important thing was to create a sense of trust and to work with existing communities.
Superkilen, 2012. Photo: Torben Eskerod
How do these jobs come about? Do you propose an idea to someone?
Nowadays, we are bold enough, and have enough cultural power, that we can propose ideas. This is only possible because we've proven that we can do things at scale. For example, the Super Reef around Denmark was proposed by us, but that is a huge project which many others can tap into. So it slowly builds up with more and more agents, cities and so forth. And eventually it becomes one huge collective effort. A ‘gesamtkunstwerk’.
Other times, as in Sharjah, in the Emirates, they invited us to do a park, much like Superkilen . When we engaged with that, we didn’t really know if we should do it. But when we visited, we found good reasons to engage and make a park.
The initial commission was actually for a temporary park that was there for two years. It was an experiment to see whether you could make a park that had no fences, where migrant workers could sit next to Emirati women and their children on a swing couch, or something like that. Without that experiment, as part of the Sharjah biennial, as
an artwork, they would never have dared to then ask us to do a permanent park. But we’ve been working on that for seven years now, and it’s about to open.
So that's a commission where someone wants something similar to a project somewhere else. Other times it's a blank canvas, like, for example, having the residency on this research boat in the Pacific. There are also galleries. We have galleries who say they’d like to have a show with us. There are museum group shows or solo shows. The collaboration builds from the invitation.
Everyone we work with, it’s always a collaboration. It's a partnership.
SUPERFLEX has always been a collective, right? How did you get started?
There are three founders. Rasmus, Jakob, and me. Me and Rasmus went to high school together, so we have known each other since we were 16. We met Jakob at photographic school, studying photo documentary. Already, at that early stage, we decided that we were not interested in the singular perspective. We don't trust the idea of the singular genius artist.
Everyone we work with, it’s always a collaboration.
Actually, no one really should have that label at any point in society, because everything is based on collective efforts. So we made the artist SUPERFLEX. We work for SUPERFLEX.
Now, with the expanded collective, with the studio, but also with partners all over the world, this has led to what we call interspecies living, an interspecies perspective.
It's a little bit like a spider web. You have the center, but you can stretch it in various directions. Sometimes it's very large, like the Super Reef, which could involve the whole country, potentially. Other times, it's a smaller group that works very intensively on a specific topic, and then you can stretch it again. It's a very dynamic way of working.
Dive-In, 2019. Photo: Lance Gerber, courtesy of Desert X
What was it about the solo genius that you didn't like?
First of all, we believe in open source. That is an economic model, but it's also a collective idea or formation. A different way to work together.
As an individual, you can stand there and you can shout and you can say all kinds of things that may sound amazing, but if no one engages with you, gives feedback or takes it away with them to use in their own content, then that has very little value beyond self-satisfaction or representation.
The celebration of the individual is maybe the biggest problem in the human world. Because we love stories, we love narratives. We too often get motivated by a singular perspective. Because, of course, it's easier just to follow one direction. But things are complex, and the complexity and diversity of an idea is creative and fascinating. This complexity is what gives form.
After all, a human cannot make babies without another one, right? So, maybe it starts there.
Perhaps some of your work is about giving people a way to approach this complexity which
is engaging, rather than daunting?
Yes, it is celebrating the collective. For the commission at the Tate Turbine Hall, we wanted to focus on finding a way to return attention to the power of the collective. The Turbine Hall is a huge space but it’s also a public space - we found that it was actually designated as a street, not many people knew that. You can pass through on a bicycle if you want to.
So we said, let's try to develop an object, a sculptural infrastructure that motivates this collective power. We always like to work with humor and play and this led to a three-person
swing. It is physically difficult to get aligned on this kind of swing. It’s like your early experiences of a swing. The sense of gravity, a sense of freedom.
Doing that with three people, you need to align everyone, you need to find the balance, and you need to start at the right moment. In a physical way, without words, it actually brings people together. Creating that gigantic network of swings attached to an orange line that connects in and out of the institution, this challenged the very idea of the institution.
Taking
that idea to Korea’s demilitarized zone is brilliant too!
That's an interesting one, because there's always more than two in a conflict. In this case, you have North Korea and South Korea, but also there's sometimes the Americans, sometimes the Chinese. Sometimes there are these two powers sitting there as presidents, but they need a mediator, or someone who enables them to speak.
Something happens when you put them on a swing. We've seen that many times. We've done this all around the world. If you can't find how to get into the
movement, you have to look at the others and say, ‘let's do it differently.’
Now there are swings in the desert in Saudi Arabia, in Antwerp, in Denmark. One’s opening in Taiwan next week. It slowly builds, and more and more places are interconnected.
What made you think of the Korean DMZ as a possible venue?
We were living in LA at that point, teaching at Cal Arts, where we had both South Korean and North Korean students. The South Korean guy told stories how, at this fence, they would stand and share a cigarette with the guys from North Korea.
You know, in the studio, we say we thrive on friction. We always look for friction, because that is where we have reason to be and act. We then look for a narrative. For example, in the Emirates, we could not just replicate the park we had created in Copenhagen. Then we found out that no one was allowed to bring out objects like tables and so on at night into public space, so everyone was just sitting alongside walls. They only wanted to be outside in the evening because it's cooler. So now we had a reason. We invited
everyone to propose objects. A celebration of friction.
It may sound strange, but if you think about it, that's exactly where you need to work. You also address the elephant in the room, which is often the most difficult thing to do.
So you go in, you find some friction. What's the process like from there?
We don't necessarily look for friction, but we listen, we learn. There's no method as such, beyond allowing the surprising to happen.
You are directly involved, hands-on rather than just conceptual?
If you're invited for a site-specific context, it is important to respect the commissioner, the people living there, and understand your users.
That's another reason why we get those commissions. We have worked in many places with many different issues - Palestine, Saudi Arabia, New Orleans just after Hurricane Katrina. There, in a crisis situation, they made a biennial called Prospect One. We stayed for half a year with the people and families who had lost everything in the Lower Ninth,
and from that we developed our work.
You have worked in some really interesting places. Is the exoticness of the location a factor in choosing new projects?
Of course, on a personal level for the three of us it's exciting. We've always done it like this, though. Our first big project was in Tanzania. My girlfriend at the time, her father was an engineer in Mozambique and I went out there with her, then the guys came a little later. Her father took us around to see how aid organizations were working. This was back in ‘93.
Before going, we were rather critical towards this northsouth, giving and receiving relationship. But seeing it face to face, changed our perspective.
Not wanting to just criticize, because that's too easy, we looked for a way to engage directly, by placing an object or engaging with a community. In the end we developed a biogas unit together with African engineers who lived in the area. This helped people to become energy independent.
That went on for 15 years, back and forth to Tanzania, Zimbabwe,
Is Not The
It
End Of The World, 2019. Installed at La Pista 500, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin 2022. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Zanzibar and other places too. So, yes, that was exotic, but it was also where we needed to be.
You manage to bring humor to some pretty serious situations. Is that important to you?
There’s humor, yes, but it's more the ability to put a specific issue or discussion on an edge, where it's tipping this way and that, against the friction.
Like the swings, they can throw you off-guard, and that’s where you can use playfulness. For example, our Power Toilets project. It's funny. It's funny that you go into a place, expecting the toilet to be run down and then it's the executive restroom where James Dimon, the boss of JPMorgan Chase, is normally sitting. On top of that, it’s in a Greek diner, at a time when Greece was collapsing, financially. So there's a certain level of humor in that playfulness and surprise. Again, you have friction, a certain tension. Then your mind is open, right?
The
humor gives people permission to think about an issue differently.
When you say children have designed a playground for
grown-ups, people laugh or smile. How will that look? That's crazy! But when you think about it, it's not so crazy that those who are the primary users of playgrounds also have a say in what they look like.
Are you optimistic about the power of artworks to improve the direction we're going, as a species?
Yes, I'm always positive in that regard, because we've had so many good experiences. Even in very complicated and critical contexts, we can go in and empower a change of perspective.
We made a film in the Marshall Islands, trying to help the locals create a strong representation of their fight to stay. That film describes, from a child's perspective, the history of the Western world treating that part of the world as a playground for experimentation.
And you now expand to involve the perspectives of other creatures?
Yes, an interspecies perspective or interspecies ethics. I don't know what that means, yet! We’ve made an Interspecies Assembly, an Interspecies Campus , and so on. These works
are now permanently installed in a few different places. And as a result, people start thinking, ‘What does that mean?’ That's the power of writing something in stone!
Plant life and ocean life and so on, they couldn't care less, in the long run, about what humans decide to do or not.
We are brutalists. We are too powerful and we can kill a lot of species. But there will always be some that are stronger. Throw in a virus from somewhere, and it goes pretty quickly in the other direction.
This is what we have to be aware of. Nature is fragile, yet it is also tremendously powerful. After all, we are part of nature too.
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PUBLISHER Design Friends
COORDINATION Reza Kianpour
LAYOUT Reza Kianpour
INTERVIEW Mark Penfold
PRINT Imprimerie Schlimé
PRINT RUN 250 (Limited edition)
ISBN 978-2-919829-10-1
PRICE 5 €
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This catalogue is published on the occasion of the lecture Celebrating the Collective with Bjørnstjerne Christiansen and SUPERFLEX at Mudam Luxembourg on June 18, 2025, organised by Design Friends.
In collaboration with Partners Service Partners
