SUPERFLEX

The Danish artist collective SUPERFLEX reimagines our environments and embraces the future of vertical fish migration by designing new structures.

As sea levels rise and natural boundaries become increasingly contested, the borders between human and fish ecologies grow ever more fluid.

SUPERFLEX (Denmark, established 1993), Vertical Migration, 2019, slip colored ceramic on ash wood pallets, 126 x 47 1/4 x 50 inches. Courtesy of the artists. Vertical Migration is based on the research project Deep Sea Minding, commissioned by TBA21-Academy, as a continuation of their program The Current. Installation view: maat – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (Lisbon), 2021. © Courtesy of EDP Foundation. Photography by Francisco Nogueira

Vertical Migration appears as three cubic arrangements of stacked bricks, positioned on moveable wooden pallets. The materials function on both a macro and micro scale, fulfilling the architectural needs of humans in the present while containing the possibility to house massive fish metropolises in a submerged future. These bricks are materially aligned with the needs of underwater creatures, their pink color scientifically known to propagate coral polyp growth. Though angular in shape, each brick houses more organic forms within, porous enough for fish and other aquatic species to burrow. Thus, Vertical Migration mediates the boundaries between the ocean’s surface and below it, an interface of interspecies habitation. Preparing for a post-human scenario, the work welcomes water, marine life, and time to move throughout it.


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