The Architecture and Design Symposium is a unique day-long event that brings together exciting architects and designers from Denmark and Australia on the occasion of Sydney Opera House’s 40th Anniversary. More information about the Architecture and Design Symposium here.

A couple of weeks ago, we profiled guest speakers NORD Architects and Mette Kynne Frandsen. This week we look at the work of artists’ group Superflex.

Superflex

Superflex was founded in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, who met while at the Royal Academy of the Fine Arts in Copenhagen.

The group sees their works as tools, as proposals that invite people to participate in the development of experimental models to alter given conditions. Often the works are assisted by experts who bring in their special interest as well. All tools can be further used and modified by their users.

With their tools, Superflex scrutinises unbalanced economic conditions within a global market, relations between producer and consumer, appropriation as a strategy, the violation of ownership and various systems of power. Superflex has become involved in legal disputes, as well as suffered prohibition orders and police raids, related to their artistic use of commercial signs and symbols. Facing these obstacles Superflex has begun to explore the productive potential of prohibition and conceived a series of projects, which impose regulations on others; for example, art institutions or other kinds of organisations.

Superflex works within and outside traditional art contexts. The group collaborates with architects, designers, engineers, businesses and marketers on tools, which have the potential for social or economic change. Besides many other public art projects the group has done the series Power Toilets. In each case, an exact copy of a lavatory originating from a powerful institution is placed in the public domain for public use. Recently the artists have engaged in urban planning and have won several competitions and awards for their work in this field.

Superflex has gained international recognition for their projects. They had solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Basel, the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst in Leipzig, Coleccion Jumex in Mexico City, Redcat in Los Angeles and Hirshhorn Museum, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki and Sculpture Garden in Washington. In addition, Superflex has participated in international arts biennials such as the Gwangju Biennial in Korea, the Istanbul Biennial, São Paulo Biennial, Shanghai Biennial and in the Utopia Station exhibition at the Venice Biennale.

For more speaker information, visit the Sydney Opera House website.