Superflex - Supergas

Superflex - Supergas

project link: http://www.superflex.net/tools/supergas/

Superflex has collaborated with Danish and African engineers to construct a simple biogas system. The orange biogas plant produces biogas that can be used for cooking and lighting from organic materials, such as human and animal stools. The system should meet the efficiency, economic resources and style demands of a modern African consumer. This means for a modest sum, an African family will be able to buy a biogas system and achieve self-sufficiency in energy.

Superflex – Supergas

artist bio
We look at our works as tools. The tools are considered as invitations rather than representations; invitations that call for a participation and continuation. The tools represent models that are being used by different persons or groups. They are not "alternatives" but are continuations and show real behaviour patterns.

The tools are based on a specific interest in social and economic commitment. The starting point for creating a tool is a belief in a heterogeneous, complex society. The set-up is developed in co-operation with diverse experts who, in turn, add their own specific interests. It can then be taken over and put into operation by various users. The tools invite people to do something: to become active. Tools are framed by and shaped in specific social and local situations and generate their meanings out of this specific context.

Through the tools we investigate communicative processes in which power, hegemony, assertion and oppression, the gain and loss of terrain become evident. Various parties, individuals or groups, enter the scene with strong personal and specific interests. They constantly influence how the tool is constructed and/or used. The set-up structures can be redefined by users, which can finally lead to changes in the tool itself. The resulting scenarios, a constantly changing succession of possibilities and meanings, are then continued as long as the interest remains alive. The use of the tools mirrors the contradictions and contentions of the users and their commitment in economic, cultural and political discourses. When we assemble not only the project and development team, but also the users, we take into account the specific interests of individual groups, their different opportunities for articulation, their interests and projections. All tools share the aspect of empowerment: e.g. having your own energy supply, becoming an independent producer of energy, having your own channel, joining a political/economic discussion. Taken in this sense, artistic praxis means a concrete cultural intervention that mediates between different interests or at least, makes them visible. In our tools we attempt to create conditions for the production of new ways of thinking, acting, speaking and imagining.

Superflex is: Rasmus Nielsen, Jakob Fenger and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen