Science advisor
Art and science
Artist’s bio
Super Kello provides the residents of Kello, a harbour in Haukipudas, with a place to sit, rest, and consider other ways to measure time. This bell-shaped stone sculpture faces out to sea like a light house, connecting the marine world to land; building a bridge between the underwater ecosystem of the fish and aquatic life and human habitation in nearby human dwellings. It welcomes fishing boats, sailing boats and leisure craft into the safety of the harbour.
In dialogue with the theme of Climate Clock the artist group has worked with Peter Chilvers as the Software Architect to create a ‘slow’ sound element. This suggests that there are other temporalities beyond the fast pace of contemporary production. At this place (the harbour) of leaving and returning, Kello’s pink stone emits sound and broadcasts Pentti Saarikoski’s Finnish translation of Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’, read by a Kello fisherwoman, Elina Halonen. Each word of the story can be heard, very slowly, one word per hour over the course of ten years, making the time of the story literal. In this way, it allows visitors to experience time at a slower pace. And reflects the duration of Odysseus’ journey home.
Aerial view of the fishing village of Kellon Kiviniemi in Haukipudas. Photo: Harri Tarvainen.
Like the Odyssey, the Kello harbour’s story is one of going away and coming back, an interface between ocean and dry land, and its modular building blocks or fish cubes will become habitats for marine life should sea levels rise. In collaboration with KWY.studio SUPERFLEX developed these modular building blocks called “fish cubes,” which maximise the surface area of a cube, creating habitable areas for marine life and so the construction for Super Kello. Fish are often affected adversely by the removal of stones from harbours, stones which they need for nesting and hiding.
Materials used in the artwork are marble, stainless steel, single channel audio.
Science advisor
Behavioural Ecologist Dr. Alex Jordan, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, Konstanz, Germany.
Alex Jordan is a behavioural ecologist studying the evolution of animal social behaviour in natural ecological and social contexts and he is especially devoted to fish. Jordan looks at why animals do what they do. He uses computational techniques developed in lab settings like Drosophila and Zebrafish, including machine vision, automated tracking, and behavioural decomposition. This is to understand how animals perceive and process social cues, and how environments, both social and physical, are changed as a consequence of animal behaviour.
Art and science
Alongside working with Dr. Alex Jordan to create new artworks which act as habitats for fish, SUPERFLEX have been exploring time and climate change with scientists for many years. Time is deeply connected to the scientific understanding of climate change. SUPERFLEX’s idea of slowing time (by which the scientists mean to slow down the rate of change) connects to the human desire to do so, so that we don’t suddenly face disastrous consequences. The amount of degrees of warming of climate change itself is calculated by measuring temperature changes over time and the scientific way we do this the world over is by looking at changes in sea level temperature. Vast networks of satellites send infrared beams which are check by ‘ground truths’ instruments on floating buoys and cruise liners across the globe. These measurements quantify whether our seas, and therefore different parts of the earth, are warming or cooling. In fact they measure the way we are forcing nature through our influence, rather than the time that nature would like to take if left to its own pace.
Superflex, photo: Daniel Stjerne.
SUPERFLEX are a group founded in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, and Rasmus Rosengren Nielsen and based in Copenhagen.
Public art commissions include the award-winning park Superkilen Copenhagen (2012) to “Interspecies Assembly” UN Headquarters, New York (2021). Exhibitions include “One, Two, Three, Swing!” Hyundai Commission (2017), Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, London; the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Fundación JUMEX, Mexico City; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; Thyssen-Bornemisza Contemporary, Vienna. SUPERFLEX’s work has featured in several iterations of the Venice Biennial as well as the Liverpool Biennial, Sharjah Biennial, Shanghai Biennial and Moscow Biennial. Their work is part of public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; Jumex Collection, Mexico City; Kunsthaus Zürich; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C; and the National Museum of Art, Copenhagen.
