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Dive-In

SUPERFLEX

Date
2020
Medium
Single-channel video projection (color, sound) on aluminum foam, metal framework
Duration
19:55 min (video) 167 x 267 x 300 cm (aluminium foam, metal framework)
Credit

Commissioned by TBA21–Academy
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection

This artwork is part of the donation and long-term loan from TBA21 to the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Details

A meeting point between the present and a most probable subaquatic future, Dive-In is an architectural installation functioning as a drive-in cinema, awaiting to become the infrastructure for marine life. In collaboration with Dr. Alex Jordan, expert in Collective Behavior among fish, several types of structures were tested in order to recognize the architectonic preferences of marine creatures, one of which is the color pink, which attracts coral polyps and facilitates the flourishing of a whole new ecosystem. Scenes of fish interacting with prototypes of these structures are projected onto the façades of these pink coral-like walls, inviting human viewers to encounter marine life interpersonally and integrating the desires of fish within the architecture itself.


Looking at a future dictated by the advancing steps of climate change, it is not only possible but mandatory to prepare our environment for a migration of the sea onto land. Dive-In is an encounter across time, elements, and species, and constructs a new architectural vocabulary fit for a future of submersion and the beginning of a new era of civilization—an era of fish. The work proposes an anachronistic encounter between humans and fish, wherein both species interact simultaneously with the same architecture.


Dive-In is the first large scale artistic result of the three-year research project Deep Sea Minding, led by SUPERFLEX and commissioned by TBA21–Academy. It was originally commissioned by Desert X in collaboration with TBA21–Academy with music composed by Dark Morph (Jónsi and Carl Michael von Hausswolff).

Artists