SUPERFLEX - Bankrupt Banks - Merrill Lynch acquired by Bank of America, September 14, 2008, 2012 cotton fabric, acrylic paint 79 x 79 inches (200 x 200 cm)

SUPERFLEX, the art collective from Copenhagen has a new series of hand painted banners, ‘Bankrupt Banks,’ that explore the corporate identities of financial institutions that brought on the economic collapse of 2008.

The bold logos of yesteryear’s mightiest banks evoked strength, resilience and power in their choice of iconic representation, depicting stalwart bulls, sharp-sighted eagles and the idealized safe havens of homes. Now that same iconography appears to have masked the corruption and avarice behind these vanguard institutions, and are revealed to be the tools of systemic deception. In retrospect, these brands appear almost comical in their lofty artistic aspirations, suffering aesthetic delusions of arrogance and grandeur. Drained of their former prestige, these obsolete, defunct symbols of glory now appear to mock our cultural conditioning to believe, and question the trust we place in our vetted experts. But these iconic representations of power are not unlike those used in coinage and currency in circulation today that seek to imply value through the depiction of royalty, gods, the canonized, and usually, dead government figureheads.

SUPERFLEX, Bankrupt Banks - Fannie Mae acquired by United States Federal Housing Finance Agency, September 7, 2008, 2012 cotton fabric, acrylic paint 79 x 79 inches (200 x 200 cm)

SUPERFLEX - Bankrupt Banks - Colonial Bank acquired by BB&T, August 14, 2009, 2012 cotton fabric, acrylic paint 79 x 79 inches (200 x 200 cm)

SUPERFLEX - Bankrupt Banks - Sovereign Bank acquired by Banco Santander SA, October 13, 2008, 2012 cotton fabric, acrylic paint 79 x 79 inches (200 x 200 cm)

The art collective SUPERFLEX is itself a corporation that is playing with the concept of these logos, now repackaged as art objects. Revalued as art, with proportional price tags ($18K each painted banner) SUPERFLEX invites the consumer to accept their reconditioned value in the economic marketplace again.

The SUPERFLEX art group, founded in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, see their projects as tools. Their artworks, whether film, paintings or sculpture, also remain functional entities outside the art gallery, becoming a vehicle for an idea, a device or simply an everyday object that could be used to smash open a window or break into a bank.

In the past, they have developed multi-disciplinary projects with scientists and engineers – manufactured a biogas they named ‘Supergas,’ for use in rural Africa, and also a series called ‘Power Toilets’ recreating power-loos associated with some of the most secure and prestigious institutions in the world, like the United Nations Security Council at the UN in New York, and placing these replicas in alternate public spaces.

Their last project in New York in 2011, done in conjunction with Creative Time, was the JPMorgan Chase Toilet, an exact replica of a Chase executive’s toilet: By placing the posh potty in a low-cost Lower East Side Greek diner, they recontextualized this symbol of privileged access. This shiny new toilet with its background of wall paintings was offered as a permanent enhancement, and seen as a possible solution for restitution to the community.

SUPERFLEX - Bankrupt Banks - CajaSur acquired by Banco de España, May 24, 2010, 2012 cotton fabric, acrylic paint 79 x 79 inches (200 x 200 cm)

SUPERFLEX -Bankrupt Banks - Anglo Irish Bank acquired by Government of the Republic of Ireland, January 15, 2009, 2012 cotton fabric, acrylic paint 79 x 79 inches (200 x 200 cm)

Olympic Restaurant on 115 Delancey Street, New York for public use. © SUPERFLEX

For more information on SUPERFLEX: http://superflex.net/

Still from Kaspar Astrup Schröder’s documentary My Playground

The city is fenced in by walls, carved up by streets, railings and barricades. Paths guide people through the city and prevent them spilling into places outside them. Free-runners transgress spaces off-limits, ascend the sides of dwellings, jump gaps between them. Walls, hurdles, ramparts do not stop them from going through them. Through their bodies the city is made transparent, its skeleton exposed.

Still from Kaspar Astrup Schröder’s documentary My Playground

Still from Kaspar Astrup Schröder’s documentary My Playground

The animation Virus by Robert Proch, shows patterns of mobility through the city’s corridors.

In My Playground (Directed by Kaspar Astrup Schroder), parkour teams from Shanghai and Copenhagen escape through spaces in the city’s architecture.

Says a parkour runner: ‘You don’t stop playing because you grow old, but you grow up because you stop playing.’

MY PLAYGROUND – PREVIEW from KASPARWORKS can be purchased on DVD from http://www.kasparworks.com

Vibskov Emenius "The Circular Series", Photo: Edel Kelly

Henrik Vibskov and Andreas Emenius recently brought their performance series to America for the first time. Vibskov Emenius performed Project 8 and Project 9 of The Circular Series, Section 4 at The Textile Museum in Washington, DC.

The Circular Series is an original site-specific performance based on human rituals, the constructions we build, and social isolation, using the contrasts of a large rigid geometric structure interacting with chaos, represented by explosions of color.

Vibskov Emenius, "The Circular Series" Photo: Edel Kelly

Vibskov and Emenius met in 2007 at Central Saint Martins and have been touring internationally with “The Fringe Projects.” The project was made into a book in 2009; the Circular Series is the 2010 follow up to The Fringe Projects. If you missed Vibskov Emenius in DC, see them in in Brazil in September where they will perform Project 10 at the Curitaba Design Biennale. In between, Henrik will stop by his home country to show his Fall fashion line for Copenhagen Fashion Week on August 13th.

Links:
Vibskov Emenius
Interwoven Arts