Superplex | Come Hell Or High Water | Arken, Ishøj

Shipping crates containing works by the Danish artist group SUPERFLEX are stacked up at Arken Museum.

Arken presents works from SUPERFLEX’s more than 30-year career, including the 2007 print project Free Beer and Kwassa Kwassa, 2015. Free Beer is a beer which is free as in free speech, not in the sense of free beer. The name plays on a well-known quote by free software activist Richard Stallman: “’Free software’ is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ’free’ as in ’free speech,’ not as in ’free beer’.” Originally named Vores Øl (Our Beer), the beer was conceived in 2004 by SUPERFLEX and students from the Copenhagen IT University. The project applies modern free software/open source methods to a traditional real-world product. The recipe and branding elements of Free Beer is published under a Creative Commons (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5) license, which means that anyone can use the recipe to brew their own Free Beer or create a derivative of the recipe.

The print Kwassa Kwassa, 2015 refers to their film project of the same name, portraying boatbuilders on the island of Anjouan in the Comoro Islands. The boats are used for fishing, but also to transport migrants to the EU. They become carriers of migrants on a dangerous ocean in a complex political setup as well as vehicles for dreams of reaching a better life on the other shore.

Come Hell Or High Water is on view at Arken, Ishøj, Denmark, until 3 January 2027