Projects
SUBJECT TO CHANGE at Droog Gallery
CURATOR
RENNY RAMAKERS
EXHIBITION
@DROOG, AMSTERDAM,
18.2 - 10.4.2022
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.