00:01
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
I have chosen the film Skarpretteren. It's from '71. And it portrays a woman who dedicates her life and gives up her own identity and so on throughout the film, for the man, for the family, for society. Then at the end she accepts to be executed. But the last sentence she says, "The next great moment belongs to us." She accepts her role as a mother, but she wants something else.

00:27
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
It's by my mother, Ursula Reuter Christiansen. My father made the music. My father died 10 years ago. This music, it's a soundtrack of my own early beginnings. My mother's pregnant in the film with my sister and it's in their farmhouse they had just bought half a year before. So this is also my home now when I'm there at the countryside.

00:46
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
It's timeless. Women don't have the free voice in many, many, many parts of the world, and other ones are suffering. But yet there is always this courage, the next big moment might belong to you, that I cherish a lot. I also use that in my own thinking and practice and daily life, I would say.

01:04
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
Things go against you, and so you find a way to alter it, and move with it, accept, but you move forward with that knowledge that you have gained. And then you reflect upon each situation you're in, and that changes you.

01:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark and the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who've made a significant mark in the US.

01:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today, our guest is Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, a Danish artist who is part of the art collective SUPERFLEX. Welcome, Bjørnstjerne.

01:47
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
Thank you.

01:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I'm in my office in Los Angeles, California. Where are you at the moment? And please describe the location for our listeners so that they can imagine that they are in the room with you.

01:59
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
I am in a large building, 1,000 square meters, a former transformer station, one of the few left in Copenhagen, three stories, a concrete box, where we now have taken over. SUPERFLEX is three guys, started many years ago, 31 years ago.

02:19
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So it's a big concrete block that we have made holes into and created heating to. It used to be used for transforming energy to trams. You can imagine how long time that is ago. So it's probably early '70s or maybe '65. So now it has a new life.

02:38
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You found SUPERFLEX with Jakob Fenger and Rasmus Rosengren in Copenhagen in 1993. How did the three of you find each other and what made you click? And how do you work together in practice?

02:51
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
Me and Rasmus, we went to high school together. So we were 15 years old. We got together there, do what you do when you are very young, maybe not so much about art, but a lot about life and learning, about yourself with others.

03:04
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
And then we went to Copenhagen. We were both in the south of Denmark. I'm from Møn, and Rasmus, an area called Kalvehave, and then moved to Copenhagen. And then we both started at a photographic school called Fatamorgana, studying photography. Particularly documentary photography. And there we met Jakob.

03:24
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
And then very fast, we got a little bored with having to portray other people. You know, put the camera up in the face of someone else and say, psst. And then they have to look at something. And we said, we'd rather, we trust more, or want to play more with staging photography. So staging settings where we would ourselves be present.

03:44
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So very fast again, moving away from the singular lens to triple and more lens and doing experiments of all kinds, blindfolding ourselves and walking around the cities and trying to learn how that influences you mental, but also your possibility of seeing.

04:02
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It is an art collective. What exactly does that mean, and what was the initial idea behind it?

04:09
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
It means that you set aside focus on the individual and you decide that you want to be influenced and listen to other people. So as an artist, we don't really trust the idea of the singular genius, the celebration of the artist as the genius. Yes, there are many geniuses, but we all build upon other people's ideas.

04:31
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
And this is how we come together as a society and families and so on. We share knowledge. The basic is that we created a body, a collective body, in sculptural thinking, but also as an idea.

04:44
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So three individuals, me, Rasmus, and Jakob, back then when we were probably 23 or 22, even before we got into the art academy, chose to form SUPERFLEX. So we work for SUPERFLEX. We don't have individual careers, don't have individual practice. We still have individual minds and thinking, but the focus is for the collective. So we trust the collective as an organizational format.

05:09
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
Our base is Copenhagen. We didn't travel and move to many other places. Particularly, a lot of our fellow artists in the '90s, when the wall came down between Germany, West and East, many moved to Berlin and so on, we decided to stay in Denmark.

05:26
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
And from the beginning and through the years, our interest was very much also to learn and be active in society. We started traveling very early, East Africa and so on, working with other people because we are inspired by many people. We also learn from every context we take part in, either by choice that we choose to be somewhere, or we are invited, now more and more with our career and evolution of our practice.

05:53
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
It also means that we have a lot of partners around the world. And in the visual arts, it is that you are represented by a gallerist. In LA, it's a gallerist called 1301PE, it's on Wilshire Boulevard, just opposite LACMA. And in Korea, it's in Seoul, a gallery called Kukje. In Copenhagen, it's Nils Stærk. We work with a gallery based in both Spain and France called Albarrán Bourdais, one also in Mexico, OMR, and one in Basel, von Bartha, in Switzerland.

06:28
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
They are our commercial partners, who collaborate with us in developing our ideas, but also at distributing our artworks, products, one could say, also open doors to people who have a unique interest in the practice that we have, that then leads to many other public commissions, but also a lot of fascinating private collectors.

06:53
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
Well, frankly, this was not something we were very interested in in the beginning. We were more interested in how we could influence and learn from society, any kind of societal structures. We did not want to be a gallery artist, but then you learn and you change and you modify and you age.

07:09
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So someone who comes into a gallery and buys a work of SUPERFLEX must have some interest in that brain that is behind or that collective body that is behind. And then you become curious. And then all of a sudden you have projects in many different parts of the world with individuals and organizations both private and public. We are also a company, which we were from day one.

07:34
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes, you are a company and you have a CEO. You have the structure of a company. What kind of business do you run?

07:42
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
We produce art. We are artists, so everything we do is linked with the idea of making art.

07:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What is the philosophy behind the company and what are the criteria for you to think that your company is a success?

07:59
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
It's actually more an organizational model. In the beginning, it was very important for us to state that we are a company and not an art group, not an NGO, because we actually thought the structure of a company in society, and particularly in our capitalist reality, that you can move in and out of any kind of structure.

08:19
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So you can go and ask, can I have a meeting with you as a CEO of a bank? Can I meet you as an engineer? Or so and so on. And then if you say that you're an art group, at least back then, they would say, I don't have time for art.

08:33
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
But if you say that you are a company and you have a name that sounds like a company, SUPERFLEX, you have a color, orange, and you are dressed in a certain way, like we had orange full suits as if we were building roads and streets and bridges, or we would come in a suit or we could also dress up as teenagers with a T-shirt.

08:53
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So you can do so many things by just declaring yourself as something else. So also playing with identities and so on. The organizational model of a company is quite dynamic and fluid and can tap in and out of so many power systems. So it was just to clarify. Now we almost see it as a practical way of being organized with employees and so on and so on.

09:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And through your art, you make a political statement.

09:18
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
From the '60s and '70s, we've been raised that art is life and life is art. It may sound strange for many. If you think about creativity, the free mind, inspiration from reading books, watching a movie, going around the corner of a street and you come past a sculpture, it is very much a playful approach to life, a curious approach, an approach that wants to motivate you to change perspective and not accept the status quo, but rather, propose, influence the different context that you are a part of.

09:57
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
Art is really a part of infrastructure. It is life. It is relating to life. It is able to bring attention to so many things in our lives that we, let's say, maybe do not dare to think about or engage with. So art works best when it gives you an opportunity or motivates you to take a travel. Might be a little travel or a long one that opens up a way of thinking about something you may not understand.

10:28
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
We are an art collective. But the name SUPERFLEX, it can be anything. It could be super flexible. It could be a fitness product, a flex machine, and so on and so on. It had quite a big influence on many of the projects we ended up doing, like a biogas system in the third world. We were the first to do internet TV station platforms called Superchannel. So also playing with our own identity and our name, which we still do.

10:56
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
You don't know what it really is. And that's what we like about it. A name like that can be so many things. When you add "super" on top of something next to it, it can be an exaggeration. It can be something that is super flexible, super strong, super stupid, and so forth. So, and super playful.

11:19
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
You maybe sense a little bit here that we do think play and humor and cautiously trying to make people feel trust. And then you can hopefully take another turn. So yes, play and humor is quite important.

11:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You do get an impression of that for sure.

11:34
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
We are curious and we engage with people and sites. We developed a park in Copenhagen called Superkilen, a one kilometer long park. We worked with two, three, four hundred people, creating a lot of new optics into the city.

11:51
Bjørnstjerne Christians
In the last 10, 15, 20 years, we've also been lucky to be invited to many very interesting settings and contexts like the Tate Modern, the Turbine Hall Commission, which is one of the largest commissions you can get.

12:04
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What were the highlights? You've been to so many places and had so many different installations and done so many different kinds of art.

12:13
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
There's quite a lot. I cannot say one of them being more defining than the other. This will be art history to define what was the most important periods. For us, it's all of them because they formed the collective mindset and body, and a different perspective also on how we see ourselves. So now we talk about interspecies living, so life that is beyond a human perspective. That is as much looking at society as such, and the planet and the wellbeing or not wellbeing of, how we act and respond as humans.

12:46
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
We've worked with climate change projects since the very early days, in East Africa, on energy systems for rural families as artworks, exhibited then later at the Louisiana Museum, but it was also a function for farmers in East Africa.

13:01
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
It may sound a little strange to understand, but an artwork can be a function in society, it can also be a sculpture, a philosophical approach within the arts. So we do art, and it really depends on context, if it has a direct function as an economic idea, as a drink, as an energy system, and so on.

13:22
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
Equally, we insist that it is also a work of art, that has another contextualization when you are in a museum like SMK or like the Louisiana or MoMA or Tate. Then people go in with a certain mindset expecting to see art and experience art. And that's exactly where you can meet them with a different perspective. It's when they come in there with an open mind.

13:48
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
I'm married to a Brazilian because we also took part in the São Paulo Biennial, and then we did many projects in Brazil, and so on and so on. It is difficult to tell my children, seven and 15 years old, all the places I've been, I've lived and so on. Everyone I've met has had an influence on me, on us, on SUPERFLEX.

14:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are collaborating with architects, designers, scientists, and community members, and you create art in spaces that are outside the traditional art spaces. How do you decide whom to work with?

14:23
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
That's also a privilege for us because we get so many invitations from all over the world. Deep in the Amazon, we were literally dropped in a small village. We started to listen, to learn from those who live there. And out of that, developed a strong relationship with a group of farmers who would use a caffeinated berry, called Guaranà. And then with them, we developed a soda that then became a product in shops, and so on.

14:48
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
At that point, we were very much interested in the economic model of self organization, how you can encounter economic ideas. We of course also choose places to be active in by ourselves. But the last many years, it very much is also by someone thinking that SUPERFLEX could do something interesting in this context.

15:09
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
Like again at the Tate Modern in London, so I think SUPERFLEX has a certain level now to be able to deal with three, four million people visiting in a period of time on that stage. Other times letting us do a public park in the Emirates, and so on.

15:23
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
Of course, it's also a matter of having the experience and being daring enough to say, yes, we can do a one kilometer long park in Copenhagen with a different approach. It's a combination of daring power and gaining more and more opportunities. I think we are well known for not being afraid of friction.

15:45
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
And by that, I mean, a manifesto in the studio is that we celebrate friction because we think that in friction is exactly where we need to address, and where we have a space to go in and if there are conflicts or something no one wants to talk about, that's exactly where art probably has its biggest potential.

16:05
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
But also learning in general, it's always where you're a little bit in doubt about something, you may not understand it. But if you allow yourself to delve into that space where you are not aware or not knowing what to do, and there, art can be this interesting mediator or take you on another path.

16:25
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
Same when you walk in the city. All of a sudden you see something over there. This is how advertisements work. Of course, it's a classic, but more if someone has built an interesting garden or something. And then you say, oh, I'll take this path. I know it's not my straight line, but I go over there. Then all of a sudden you are, wow, I never saw this thing before. So that's a bit how we also let the people, partners, guide us in moving into waters that we don't understand. But we're curious.

16:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have mentioned that copyright and intellectual property is gaining so much power. What do you think about protecting artists who have unique creative ideas and creative expression? What about the value of art?

17:11
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
It's not a conflicting statement. We say "if value then copy" the intellectual property regime, as we say, if value then right. Copyright developed in England from trying to protect or give honor to writers. And then slowly you could copy a writer's book, like monks would sit and copy it by hand.

17:32
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
Then came the printing machine and so on. And later on, it became more and more also an economic model or trademarks, patents, and so on and so forth. Actually adapting, copying, maybe not to the best, but sometimes yes, the way that you protect rights. It has become like a regime of intellectual property, because for us, knowledge is everywhere and knowledge, and any invention, any idea, is on top of something else.

18:03
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
There's nothing that is not building upon other people's ideas or an invention or something. We do of course respect an author, we're just very critical towards the power that IP, intellectual property systems have gained.

18:22
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
For example, when you develop medicine and so on that are based upon someone else's knowledge, like a university develops an HIV medicine, and then a company comes in and takes the patent because they financed the university, it is very classical in the US.

18:38
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
And then all of a sudden, how do we then distribute that medicine? Who has the rights to the raw material of the knowledge? For example, also, computer programming, most data patterns are in the US, more than 50%. What is the rest of the world supposed to do when all that is protected by those who have the power to protect?

18:58
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So we say "If Value Then Copy" playfully. It's become quite a famous statement. So we definitely don't have anything against protecting originality and so on, but we have something against that ideas are not everyone's. Or, let's put the phrase a little bit different. The way that you use an idea, it is more valuable for society than protecting someone's rights.

19:23
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So that's why we, of course, trust open source rather than a patent trademark system. Open source is a very strong economic model that has gained power over the last many years. I think most programmers, economists will also agree on this. But we started confronting it, let's say, already 20 years ago and so on, because we also learned from many others like the open software movement, free software movement, and so on.

19:49
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
But also I think it's important that we start also looking into and being open to so many other ways of people organizing their lives economically and so on around the world. Small tribes and so on can be very, should be very, influenced for how we also organize, let's say, in Denmark and other places.

20:08
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
By sharing often, you can go to a small community in the Amazon where they share everything. There's no one who owns anything. And this is a way that they have lived for many, many years. And that functions very well, but we are just very bad at sharing those experiences because we can learn from all of them.

20:25
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
I am of course fortunate that I am born and raised and live in a welfare system. I'm super, super privileged with that. And maybe the most important is, of course, I have my rights to the hospitals and to education and so on. But foremost, they also influence how I also believe about ideas and creativity and playfulness and sharing.

20:50
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
Of course, I am privileged. I'm white. I'm a man of 54, and I try to work with that and distribute that knowledge and respect the learnings. I'm fortunate because I'm also out there invited to work with indigenous guys in the Amazon, who never heard about copyright or anything like that.

21:12
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
And then we can also deal with that when we're together. So the park in Copenhagen is also, everything is copied and modified and adapted from other places. And that is a method. Yeah.

21:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have created some rather spectacular events around your art. You flooded several recreations of McDonald's. You've invented a biogas company, built community parks that you talked about in Copenhagen, for instance.

21:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you've created installations in museums like the National Gallery of Denmark, Tate Modern, Gallery Lafayette, and several museums in the US. What has been the highlight in terms of what you have created here in the US?

21:54
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
I have to be a little bit playful here. We did a work 15 years ago called Power Toilets. And it was a public arts project made by an organization called Creative Time, which is one of the most important public arts organizations in the US or New York. This was just around the Wall Street demonstrations, the financial crisis collapse.

22:16
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So what we did was we found someone who worked at JP Morgan Chase, the executive office. And she went up with her mobile phone, took photos of the executive toilets. And then we copied it one to one into a Greek diner in the Lower East Side. So you would go into that diner and you go to the restroom and you are in an exact copy of JP Morgan Chase executives' toilets.

22:41
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So that transformation of something that is used by someone in power, all of a sudden changing that into a public use. That's classic SUPERFLEX. We've done several things in the US, but that one, I think, stands out as a good example of how we like to develop artworks. We've shown many places in the US, but I still would say that one, I'm particularly happy with.

23:04
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
Of course, the most powerful place to be present was when we did a projection onto the UN Security Council in New York, That was during COVID where the politicians were discussing biodiversity. Every year they come together with a big topic. So all of these politicians from around the world, they sit and discuss climate change, biodiversity, what are we going to do?

23:25
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
And we said, but you have to listen to, you have to invite those who are influenced mostly by what humans do. So we had done an excursion or an expedition in the Pacific where we dive deep in and learn from the creatures in the sea. So it's what we call interspecies living, for now seven years, researching, learning from corals, from organisms in the sea, and then developing structures on land, waiting for sea level to rise.

23:50
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
But we encountered what is called the siphonophores, which are creatures that work collectively that come in trillions from the deep bottom. They come up to the surface. They clean the surface of the sea. So take down carbon dioxide, pollution, organic matter, and then they take it down to the bottom of the sea where it's stored.

24:09
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So they are cleaning and they are creating oxygen and so on. So they are super important for our wellbeing as humans and the planet as such. So we filmed that creature, and we projected it 140 meters tall onto the UN building that you can see from afar. So in a way, inviting other creatures to be partaking in dialogue about biodiversity, what to do.

24:32
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So that's probably the most influential, you could say, and the biggest stage you can have. In parallel, we did a big project in Central Park called Interspecies Assembly, where people could go and be motivated to think and understand and take the perspective of the species. So those two are, they're New York based, both of them.

24:52
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
If we could go back in time for just a moment to when you were a child. You grew up in a house with two artists, Henning Christiansen and Ursula Reuter Christiansen. How did that influence the way that you found your own path in life? And when did you decide that you wanted to be an artist too?

25:12
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
I'm born in Copenhagen and my father was a well-known, very experimental composer — music composer. He was invited to go to Germany, where my mother was studying with quite a famous guy called Joseph Beuys, known for the idea about art is life and life is art, that we relate and respond to society, which artists have done always, but it was defined in that period.

25:38
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
And my mother's a student there together with Sigmar Polke and many others who became big stars also. And they fell in love and then they moved to Denmark. Then finally after two years, it was during the '68 times, my parents wanted to move somewhere else. They wanted to move to the countryside where there was maybe a bigger potential for creating a revolution.

26:03
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
'68 and so on was a revolutionary year, but it was also where the cities were also a bourgeoisie to some extent. The countryside was really where it was still farmers, farmside inequality. Farmers in Denmark, if you were a little tiny farmer, you were bound to a bigger farm, right? A bigger farm would then control your rights and so on. It's not so long time ago.

26:25
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So the '70s, I grew up on a little island with a very highly experimental family craziness, if I can say so, of artists from all over coming and experimenting with life and so forth. It's an island. Denmark consists of 440 islands. So we are really an island nation, or ocean nation, you could say.

26:44
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
There's never more than 50 kilometers away from the sea. So maybe that influences me more in the beginning, ocean life and so on being on the farm side. I'm very grateful for that. I will not move back to the island, I think. You never know. I'm very much a city boy now.

27:03
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
I really couldn't care less what my parents did. I was a football player, a good one. And I also had to be a little bit the mediator between crazy artists who were German, my mother's German. And at that time, it was not well seen in the countryside. I was also the oldest of my siblings. I had to also be a little bit of a diplomat or more the mediator there. And football was a good medium for that. Soccer, for those who listen from the US.

27:33
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
And then slowly, but not until I was 19 years, I left home and I went on a big trip to Asia, to Bali and other places. I started photographing and then it just slowly started. But only because I met the right people also, Rasmus and Jakob. And then it became also safe for me, you could say. I never thought about it that way, but maybe it did become a safe place where I could with others define a path.

28:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So it's safer to be together than be an individual, you feel?

28:04
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
It's safer for me. I'm not talking about — I cannot say so much for everyone else, but it was okay to be an artist. Where before for me, it was pretty whack. And also not very economically viable. But mostly, I did not so much appreciate the craziness of it all. I was more grounded.

28:22
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
I needed to be grounded. But when you then move away and you meet others who slowly open up and find it interesting also. So both Rasmus, Jakob, and I were also visiting often my parents and so on. And it became part of an environment. And then the wall collapsed between Germany. And then everyone, we were all in Berlin all the time.

28:40
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
And that was super interesting. Because everything happened there. And then it became natural. And then we immediately began to work at SUPERFLEX. And there was also never another name discussed or anything. It was just straight into action.

28:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I can see no art behind you. The wall is white, but I can see a few books. I have an idea that you read a lot. And what inspires you for your art? I have a feeling there's all kinds of different books in your house.

29:14
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
I do appreciate a good library for many qualities, also for the acoustics. It's quiet, it's a great place to be. Books are inspiring because they contain thoughts and ideas and images and inspiration. And it takes you somewhere else because most of the time, a book, just the words, motivates you to bring attention to your own imaginary power. And of course, that's very closely linked to how you work as an artist also.

29:41
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So the books I have behind me are partly SUPERFLEX books, but there's also one called Luna Luna. It's a rediscovery of an amusement park, first time made in Hamburg, where some of the biggest artists from the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s created playful amusement installations that have now been reenacted and, let's say, taken care of. Luna Luna Park, it's called. Very inspiring.

30:06
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
SUPERFLEX turned 30 in 2023. Did you have a huge celebration where you reflected on the years that have passed and what you have achieved? How was it to reach this milestone?

30:17
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
Maybe not so much more than reaching five, ten, 15, 20 and so on. We've always been very good at the turn of something. Of course, in the art world, you have a 20th anniversary. We had a big show at Charlottenborg, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, which everyone should visit. It's in the center of Copenhagen.

30:34
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
It's also next to the art academy. So it's close to home for us. That's where we were educated for nine years. So that was a big show there, 20th anniversary. We decided to invite eight different curators in one show, at the same time, and they would get all our works available.

30:51
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
They didn't know what the other did. So you would, for example, see some works repeated several times when you went through the exhibition. Because each work, whoever curates it, whoever sets the works together would have a different perspective, different idea how that work of SUPERFLEX is relevant for them.

31:11
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
It can be about energy, it can be about power, it can be about play, it can be about humor. So all of a sudden you walked around and you would see the same work again but contextualized in a different way.

31:24
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So turning 30, let's say, post COVID, it set some limitations for a certain short period of time. But yes, we definitely celebrated. We also got some awards and so forth. I would say, we mostly are more and more happy that we are actually born in '93. So even though I am actually 54, I am quite much younger as SUPERFLEX. So it's also a way of staying young, right?

31:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's a great way to look at it.

31:51
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
Yeah.

31:53
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I like that. It seems SUPERFLEX is unstoppable. You have existed for three decades and you are still going strong. If I speak to you in 10 or 20 years, will you still be associated with SUPERFLEX or do you have other things on your bucket list?

32:11
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
I would think, yes, I'm still part of SUPERFLEX, and SUPERFLEX may have turned into something else, transformed. Luckily and thankfully it's not a fixed structure on a fixed idea. So we will transform like the last seven years in the studio, exercising interspecies living, philosophy and mentality, that we did not have 10 years ago, that mindset.

32:34
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
So it will transform continuously. It's a flexible organization. And we can, it can change completely by one encounter with someone somewhere who teaches us all of a sudden something or says something that takes us to a place. Like when we were invited by an organization called TBA 21 to be expedition leaders of a boat in the Pacific for three years.

32:57
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
You can just do whatever you want out there by scientists from all over the world from NASA and so on, just dive in, that changed our perspective dramatically. So that I expect also to happen in the next 10 years or so, or tomorrow maybe.

33:14
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
But I also know just by being with my daughter of seven years. She has created a new term, which is actually in a Danish beautiful world that doesn't exist. So she's super creative and she has created "creativification." So everything can be turned into something creative and different and transformative. So I'm quite impressed by that. And that inspires me besides many other things.

33:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Well, thank you so much for your time, Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, the super flexible artist. We really appreciated your time.

33:50
Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
You're welcome. Yeah, thank you.

33:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Bjørnstjerne Christiansen talks about Ursula Reuter Christiansen's The Executioner from 1971 at the National Gallery of Denmark.