Projects

SUBJECT TO CHANGE at Droog Gallery

CURATOR
RENNY RAMAKERS
EXHIBITION
@DROOG, AMSTERDAM,
18.2 - 10.4.2022

SUBJECT TO CHANGE

Superflux: Translating future uncertainty into present day choices

Who we are, how we act, what we gather around, our collective agency, our hopeful futures; are all deeply entangled with messy histories of mindless extraction, oppressive colonialism, social injustices and climate apathy. The roots of today’s surveillance technologies, algorithmic culture wars, fractured post-truth narratives, climate crisis and the pandemic are part of this continuous narrative.

If we want to find hope amidst crisis, we must force a reckoning with such interconnected complexities, and imagine alternatives beyond our present limitations of reality.

SUBJECT TO CHANGE is a collection of Superflux’s recent works that does just this. From climate crisis to ambient technologies, political unrest and culture wars, their immersive installations, speculations, and films confront some of the most complex challenges of our times, and carry us towards different worlds of possibility, care, and hope.

By reframing the human in direct interdependence with other species,  Superflux’s mythopoetic works acknowledge our shared purpose, our shared fates, our shared unison.

When we love our earth, our rivers, rocks, mountains, birds, animals, plants, and fungi, we care for them. And what we care for, we protect. A simple but powerful message framed through poignant, mythical story, folklore, and sensory immersion.

SUBJECT TO CHANGE is timely and prescient. The works are not solutions to our crisis, but perhaps more importantly, are beacons of hope, of reimagination, renewal, and precarious flourishing.

 

Trigger Warning

Hopeful and haunting, Trigger Warning explores the polarisation of beliefs in our networked society and the escalation of cultural conflict. Set in a “semantic city” of ideas, in which subcultural clashes bubble beneath the surface. Misinformation weaves tendrils of fear in every direction. Anxiety is an epidemic. Surviving within digital platforms once called for an armour of thick skin and a tongue in your cheek. Now, every word, every action is scrutinised and judged, attacked or applauded. 

Early visions of the internet, a realm of independence and solidarity have given way to a flurry of different perspectives. A crescendo of confusion and aggression. Narrated by musician Nabihah Iqbal, the film confronts audiences with questions of how we got here, and where it will end.

Commissioner Museum of Discovery, University Of South Australia

Project Team Jon Ardern, Anab Jain, Max Scheidl, Matthew Edgson, Danielle Knight, Nicola Ferrao, Natasha Hicken, Ewa Winiarczyk

Year 2018

Further Details Trigger Warning Film; Trigger Warning Press Details and Images

 

the Intersection

The commodification of our time and attention ensured we consumed more and more content, until contexts collapsed. Until algorithmically generated clickbait journalism sparked forest fires. Until rebellion erupted. 

Set in the near future, the film the Intersection journeys from a violent present to a cooperative future through the lens of four protagonists. They gather with others from across the country in a circle of dialogue, foregrounding the changed role of ambient technology in facilitating positive action over fragmentation and extraction.

Telling stories of active hope from those who have fought to reimagine extractive technology, to serve community, support nature, and value planetary relationships.

 

the Intersection Artefact: Server Frame Backpack

The Server Frame Pack is handcrafted from the detritus of the Anthropocene: salvaged harddrives, discarded electronics, foraged wood and hand-etched circuit boards. 

In Superflux’s film the Intersection, the Server Frame Pack is carried by Jake, the journalist, to collect and share data and information, making him a physical network node. Rather than click bait journalism, this form of nomadic journalism is inspired by the principles of active listening; as Jake traverses across communities sharing stories and nurturing dialogue.

 

 

the Intersection Artefact: Airborne Pollution Sensor

The Airborne Pollution Sensor is handcrafted from the detritus of the Anthropocene: salvaged electronics and discarded household objects. 

In Superflux’s film the Intersection, this sensor is part of a wider DIY hyper-local, sensor network that illustrates just and equitable uses of technology. Such sensors are distributed within a natural environment to collect data about its ecology and key environmental indicators —allowing communities to gain a better understanding of environmental condition such as air pollution.

 

the Intersection Artefact: Illegal Logging Sensor

The Illegal Logging Sensor is handcrafted from the detritus of the Anthropocene: salvaged electronics and discarded household objects . 

In Superflux’s film the Intersection, this sensor is part of a wider DIY hyper-local, sensor network that illustrates just and equitable uses of technology. Such sensors are distributed within a natural environment to collect data about its ecology and key environmental indicators such as illegal logging —allowing communities to take action collectively. 

 

 

the Intersection Artefact: Sensor Monitor

The Sensor Monitor is handcrafted from the detritus of the Anthropocene: re-appropriated consumer electronics and foraged wood. 

In Superflux’s film the Intersection, this network monitoring device acts as an entry point into the sensor network, communicating with the network’s environmental sensors surveying. The device provides a simple overview of the position of sensors and compiles the collected data for easy analyses.

 

Commissioner Eshanthi Ranasinghe, Julia Solano And Nicole Allred At Omidyar Network

Strategy And Creative Direction Jon Ardern, Anab Jain

Film Direction Anab Jain, Matthew Edgson, Jon Ardern

Development And Production Matthew Edgson, Lizzie Crouch, Jon Ardern, Nicola Ferrao, Ed Lewis, Anab Jain, Nico Fioritti, Leanne Fischler, Natalia Dovhalionok

Research Aarathi Krishnan, Yuebai Liu, Jay Owens, Justin Pickard

Year 2020 – 21

Further Details the Intersection Film; the Intersection Press Details and Images

 

Field Guide for a More-Than-Human Politics

First presented by Anab Jain at the Tentacular Festival in November 2019, this Field Guide invites us to consider the practice of ‘more-than-human politics’, a practice that shifts our perspectives from human-centred to more-than-human worlds. 

A more-than-human politics gives us a new kind of relational agency to help us imagine alternatives for living with and through global warming. It which allows us to invent new practices of more-than-human care, humility, imagination, interdependence, resistance, revolt, loss, mourning and resurgence.

For this Field Guide, Superflux have drawn inspiration from the scholarly works of Anna Tsing, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Anne Galloway, Tim Ingold, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Vandana Shiva, Ursula Le Guin, Dorian Sagan and Kim Stanley Robinson.

Year 2019

Further Details Superflux Manifesto; Calling for a More-Than-Human Politics

 

Invocation for Hope

Invocation for Hope at Vienna Biennale for Change, 2021. Photoshoot by Lorenz Seidler.

Invocation For Hope was an immersive installation in the central hall of the MAK in Vienna, for the Vienna Biennale 2021. Designed as a living, resurgent forest, its scale and sensory experience invokes hope for a better world in the face of climate change.

Accompanied by an original soundscape from Cosmo Sheldrake, visitors walked through a grid of 400 burnt pines destroyed by a recent wildfire. Moving through skeletal remains of fire-blackened trees towards the centre, death restores fertility, making way for new life – green shoots of hope. Wild maple, birch and larch spring up organically around moss, ferns, and grass. Sounds of animal and bird song fill the forest. At the heart of this resurgent forest, a pool with reflections of Alpine animals invites visitors to meditate on their place in this more-than-human world – a part of the planet, not masters of it. 

Invocation for Hope was commissioned by MAK Vienna,  for the Vienna Biennale for Change 2021 in response to the theme ‘Planet Love: Climate Care in the Digital Age’. 

Commissioner Museum For Applied Arts, Vienna

Curator Marlies Wirth (Curator, Digital Culture and MAK Design Collection)

Project Team Jon Ardern, Ed Lewis, Florian Semlitsch, Leanne Fischler, Anab Jain, Niccolo Fioritti, Eva Tausig, Nicola Ferrao, Lizzie Crouch, Matt Edgson

Soundscape Cosmo Sheldrake

Motion Design Dimitris Papadimitriou and Michele Vannoni

Year 2021

Funding Support This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759.

Further Details Invocation for Hope Film; Invocation for Hope Press Details and Images

 

Refuge for Resurgence

Refuge for Resurgence, Biennale Architettura, La Biennale di Venezia, 2021. Photograph by Giorgio Lazzaro.

Refuge for Resurgence is centred around a majestic oak table where multiple species gather, as equals, to dine together. The scene lays bare a conversation between the paralysis of fear and the audacity of hope.

Having survived Earth’s abrupt shift to an era of precarious climate, a multi-species community gathers in the blasted ruins of modernity to find new ways of living together. 

Working together to carve a new world out of the smouldering remains of the old. Working together to forge enduring forms of sharing and survival. Working together to revive this land; this land once a place of order and control.

A place where all species, all forms of life, were once forced to submit to an alien law. A law that dictated what could live and where. A law labelling anything that did not obey its monolithic order ”weed”, “pest” or “vermin”. 

A law that for a time felt relentless, unending, unstoppable; until the planet rebelled and threw its house of cards to the wind. Now, in the ruins of that old world, those weeds, pests and vermin have risen, and reclaimed their rightful place at the table of planetary ecology. 

Their rightful place in a new home. A home built on humility, resourcefulness and imagination. A home strong enough to weather the storm, to rise from the flood, to endure the heat. 

Here sit a fox, rat, wasp, pigeon, cow, human adults and child, wild boar, snake, beaver, wolf, raven and mushroom. More than the mythologising of their experiences, they gather in a shared hope for our more than human future. 

A hope in the resurgence of life stretched thin around this rock, painting its surface blue and green as it spins wildly in the vast blackness.

Commissioner Venice Biennale Architettura 2021

Curation Hashim Sarkis, Gabriel Kozlowski and Roi Salgueiro

Idea and Conception Anab Jain and Jon Ardern

Superflux Development Team Ed Lewis, Nicola Ferrao, Leanne Fischler, Nico Fioritti and Matt Edgson

Visual Effects Sebastian Tiew of Cream Projects

Woodworking Gareth Huw Lewis of Classic Watercraft

Botanical Design Miranda King of Wild and King

Year 2021

Funding Support This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759.

Further Details Refuge for Resurgence Film; Refuge for Resurgence Press Details and Images

 

SUBJECT TO CHANGE Credits

Commissioner
Droog Gallery

Curator
Renny Ramakers

Idea and Conception
Anab Jain and Jon Ardern (Co-Founders, Superflux)

Superflux Development Team
Jon Ardern, Ed Lewis, Leanne Fischler, Anab Jain, Nicola Ferrao, Matt Edgson

Exhibition Dates
18.2 – 10.4.2022

Further Details

For more information and interviews please contact: Anab Jain: anab@superflux.in or hello@superflux.in.

The Press Release and supporting imagery for this exhibition can be found at this link.

SUPERFLUX

Somerset House Studios, London UK
hello@superflux.in
All rights reserved © 2017. No. 6601242

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Title By Date
From Active Hope to Tangible Realities: Interview with Anab Jain Superflux 04.12.2023
The Quiet Enchanting launches on the Strand Superflux 19.10.2023
Action Speaks Summit Now Open at New York Climate Week 2023 Superflux 21.09.2023
Radical Design For A World In Crisis in Noema Magazine Superflux 27.04.2023
Superflux featured in Design Week Superflux 17.03.2023
Announcing Superflux’s ambitious new initiative: CASCADE INQUIRY Superflux 10.01.2023
ANAB & JON RECEIVE THE ROYAL DESIGNER FOR INDUSTRY (RDI) AWARD 2022 Superflux 10.01.2023
SAFE: A Collection of Works Exploring Safer Futures Superflux 05.10.2022
Superflux Featured on BBC Radio 4 Anab 10.08.2022
SUBJECT TO CHANGE: Announcing Superflux’s first-ever solo exhibition at The DROOG Gallery Superflux 04.02.2022
Superflux’s new immersive installation opens at Museum of the Future, Dubai Superflux 23.02.2022
Design Studio of the Year Award 2021 Superflux 17.12.2021
A More Than Human Manifesto Superflux 17.12.2021
Superflux Interview in ICON Magazine Superflux 12.12.2021
“Dreamed-up Designs”: a Financial Times feature on Superflux Superflux 18.06.2021
Calling Creative Producers! Superflux 08.02.2021
‘Our Friends Electric’ acquired by the European Patent Office Anab 15.03.2021
Emerging Futures Grant from National Lottery Community Fund Superflux 16.11.2020
‘Standing on the Shoulders’ Podcast: On Plural Futures and Multi-Species Companionship Superflux 01.10.2020
Superflux Invited to La Biennale Di Venezia 2021 Superflux 03.07.2020
EU Horizon 2020 Grant for Superflux and Partners Superflux 19.06.2020
Experiments in Indoor Farming Superflux 08.06.2020
Calling for a More-Than-Human Politics Superflux 23.03.2020
Superflux Feature in ‘Feeling the Future’ Conference Superflux 24.06.2020
Spring in Flux Superflux 14.04.2020
Calling Creative Producers! Superflux 29.01.2020
Inviting Internship Applications Superflux 16.01.2020
Come Work With Us Superflux 01.10.2019
Stop Shouting Future, Start Doing It Anab 24.01.2019
2018 Highlights Superflux 21.12.2018
Instant Archetypes: A toolkit to imagine plural futures Superflux 01.11.2018
TED Talk: Why We Need To Imagine Different Futures Anab 19.06.2017
Cartographies of Imagination Anab 30.09.2018
Tackling the Ethical Challenges of Slippery Technology Anab 11.06.2018
AI, HUMANITARIAN FUTURES, AND MORE-THAN-HUMAN CENTRED DESIGN Superflux 08.06.2018
The Future Starts Here Superflux 29.05.2018
Studio News: Power, AI and Air Pollution Superflux 09.10.2017
Future(s) of Power Launch Event Anab 09.10.2017
BUGGY AIR AT DESIGN FRONTIERS Superflux 15.09.2017
Calling all comrades & collaborators! Superflux 14.09.2017
CAN SPECULATIVE EVIDENCE INFORM DECISION MAKING? Anab 31.05.2017
STUDIO NEWS: TED, MAPPING, FOOD COMPUTERS, AND THE FUTURE OF WORK. Superflux 21.04.2017
BACK TO THE FUTURE: WHAT WE DID IN 2016 Superflux 31.01.2017
REALITY CHECK: PRESENTING AT UNDP SUMMIT Jon 06.12.2016
MITIGATION OF SHOCK JOURNAL Jon 12.07.2016
STUDIO HAPPENINGS Anab 04.07.2016
PROFESSORSHIP AT THE UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED ARTS VIENNA Anab 28.06.2016
HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2015 Anab 30.12.2015
SUPERFLUX MAGAZINE, ISSUE 1. Anab 21.04.2015
THE DRONE AVIARY JOURNAL Anab 09.04.2015
IOT, DRONES AND SPACE PROBES: ALTERNATE NARRATIVES Anab 01.03.2015
AUTUMN NEWS Jon 08.11.2014
ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGIES AND DESIGN: AN INTERVIEW WITH SARA HENDREN Anab 07.11.2014
A QUARTERLY UPDATE FROM THE STUDIO Anab 11.05.2014
IN THE LOOP: DESIGNING CONVERSATION WITH ALGORITHMS Superflux 04.04.2014
IOTA WINS NOMINET TRUST FUNDING Jon 25.10.2013
SAILING THE SEAS OF SUPERDENSITY: GUEST POST BY SCOTT SMITH Superflux 19.10.2013
DNA STORIES: GUEST POST BY CHRISTINA AGAPAKIS Superflux 30.09.2013
PRESS RELEASE: DYNAMIC GENETICS VS. MANN Jon 01.08.2013
AN INTRODUCTION TO INFRASTRUCTURE FICTION: GUEST POST BY PAUL GRAHAM RAVEN Superflux 24.06.2013
SUPERNEWS, VOL 1. Jon 08.04.2013