Project Gallery

SUPERFLEX

English

Kwassa Kwassa

In their 2015 film Kwassa Kwassa, the artist group SUPERFLEX conjures a contemporary myth, making the peculiarities of colonization and geography seem fantastical and allegorical. The film, which is set in the Comoros Islands, an archipelago off the southeastern coast of Africa, interrogates issues of economic and social inequality between the so-called developed and developing worlds, while reframing narratives of migration and movement across the powerful but invisible borders that shape our world.

The work takes its title from small, handmade fiberglass fishing boats called kwassa kwassa—translated in the local dialect as “unsteady ship.” These boats are used not only as fishing vessels, but also as vehicles for the perilous trips between islands. The particular journey that SUPERFLEX explores in Kwassa Kwassa is between the Comorian islands of Anjouan and Mayotte. Though the trip is fewer than 50 miles by sea, this short distance separates two worlds.

Kwassa Kwassa begins with a stunning view of the horizon overlooking the sea, where a small white boat floats empty and untethered. A man speaks over these images in gravelly Comorian, and white subtitles appear at the bottom of the screen. He asks us to “Imagine an island in the Indian Ocean and another island close by with the same people. One is part of Europa, but the other is not, and in between them is the sea.” When he is finished speaking, the camera plunges into the

water, our perspective is disoriented as we peer up through its surface, spinning in place below the boat in a panicked moment of drowning.

This precisely considered opening sequence is emblematic of the lush and hyperdetailed quality of the film. The sensual and saturated imagery and the seemingly omnipotent perspective of the camera—much of the work was shot with a drone—as well as the unseen narrator, heightens the work’s otherworldly quality. SUPERFLEX’s highly stylized visual sensibility is evident in their 2008 high-definition videos, Burning Car and Flooded McDonald’s, which capture spectacular acts of destruction against capitalist symbols. Kwassa Kwassa is more narrative and earnest in its affect, but it exemplifies the group’s acutely

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1 These names are the internationally ascribed French words for the islands, but locally the three major independent islands are referred to by their Comorian names: Ngazidja, Mwali, and Nzwani, respectively. The Comorian name for Mayotte is Maore, but as it remains under French control, it is predominantly referred to as Mayotte. 2 The archipelago was eventually established as a province of Madagascar in 1912, which was itself a French colony. 3 Mayotte held two referendums in the mid-1970s, simultaneous to the independence movement that made clear their desire to remain a protectorate of France. Nonetheless, they became a part of the newly formed independent state. 4 For further reading on the history of the Comoros, see Helen Chapin Metz, Indian Ocean: Five Island Countries (Washington, DC: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1995) and Malyn Newitt, The Comoro Islands: Struggle against Dependency in the Indian Ocean (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1984).

refined vision, which owes as much to a history of video art as it does an appropriation of the seductive aesthetics of popular culture and cinema.

The narrator then goes on to relate what he calls the “funny story” of Europe’s origin—that of Zeus and Europa, a Phoenician woman who Zeus, in the form of a white bull, ferried on his back to the island of Crete and then ravished. Beyond the irony that the European continent was named “after an enchanting Arabic woman,” the narrator suggests that this is the first appearance of the figure of the coyote, one who smuggles people across borders. Kwassa Kwassa builds from these initial points of reference—the Comoros and this origin myth of illicit transport.

The Comoros is made up of four major islands located in the Mozambique Channel of the Indian Ocean: Anjouan, Grande Comore, Mohéli, and Mayotte.1 The islands were originally populated by people from East Africa, the Middle East, and, to a lesser extent, Southeast Asia. Beginning with Mayotte in the mid-1800s, over the next 70 years the French came to control all the Comoros islands through a series of treaties and exchanges.2 In the 1970s, like many colonized territories around the world, the Comoros sought and gained independence; in this case, after a series of referendum votes.3 The subsequent decades on the islands have been tumultuous, marked by numerous coups and deadly power struggles. In 2011, following another referendum, Mayotte returned to its former colonizers—it became a department d’ouetre-mer (overseas department) of France. This designation makes Mayotte a part of France and its residents French; its economy runs on the Euro and its civil, legal, and tax codes originate in Paris. In 2014, the European Union acknowledged this status, and Mayotte now represents the outermost territory of the EU.4 SUPERFLEX encountered this history while they were working

on a commission on the islands of Réunion and Mayotte; they were struck by a sensation of displacement and transposition, and were inspired to make a film that would capture the surreality of the place and the experience of being there.

The dreamlike opening sequence of the film is broken by a sudden shift in imagery and sound as the camera turns its focus to men meticulously making the kwassa kwassa. Small details of this process are beautifully illuminated by bright white sunlight, while the narrator provides a poetic retelling of the recent history of the Comoros and its current status as one of the world’s poorest countries. The script for the film was developed from interviews with the boat builders and smugglers, and the narrator, Soumette Ahmed, translated and helped write it. This collaborative process reveals the complexity of the circumstance of their lives; while Ahmed expounds the shared singularity of Comorian identity across the islands, he acknowledges, “You can’t eat identity.” When this video was first exhibited at Nils Stærk Gallery in Copenhagen, it was accompanied by a series of text-based paintings featuring the phrase “You can’t eat identity” in white set against backgrounds the colors of Euro notes. These paintings point to the heart of the project: the painful dissonance between the desire for self-determination and the need for economic access.

In much of their work, SUPERFLEX examines socioeconomic models, corporate structures, and systems of politics, finance, and production, revealing their mechanisms and paradoxes. Many of their best-known works, which they refer to as “tools,” employ a diversity of media and strategies, operating as interventions, engaging and disrupting preexisting codes and forms, and often relying on public participation. While Kwassa Kwassa seemingly represents a divergent tack for the group, lacking the humor and interventionist impulse

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Formed in 1993, SUPERFLEX has exhibited widely around the world. They have had solo presentations at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; Arizona State University, Phoenix; Ecatepec, Mexico; Fundación JUMEX, Mexico City; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands, among others. Their work was the subject of a major retrospective at the Kunsthall Charlottenborg in 2014. They have taught and conducted workshops in Italy, Germany, the United States, and Denmark.

Biography

5 Åsa Nacking, “Preface” in SUPERFLEX: Superfake/The Parley (Lund, Sweden: Lunds konsthall, 2016), 194.

Cover, 3, 4

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SUPERFLEX, Kwassa Kwassa, 2015. Digital color video, with sound, 17 min. Commissioned by Beaufort Beyond Borders 2015 and Marrakech Biennale 6. Supported by Danish Art Council. Courtesy the artists, Nils Stærk, Copenhagen, and 1301PE Gallery, Los Angeles

SUPERFLEX, Burning Car, 2008. Digital color video, with sound, 9 min.30 sec., Courtesy the artists, Nils Stærk, Copenhagen, and 1301PE Gallery, Los Angeles

that has become somewhat of a signature, it represents a masterful and sensitive culmination of their film work to date, revealing their trenchant eye for the lived contradictions of global economy. In all its many forms, their work is ultimately a means, as Åsa Nacking writes, to “visualize the problems of economic imbalance.”5 By reinscribing the narrative of a migrant’s journey with the import of an epic saga, and by connecting it to both ancient and recent history, SUPERFLEX offers an incisive critique of current political discourse in Europe (and by extension in the United States) and the failing international response to the global upsurge of migration and the displacement of economic and war refugees.

In the second half of the film, we see the completed boat carried to the sea by hand and by truck; it appears as if it were a coffin at the center of a procession of pallbearers. This threat of death permeates the film and suggests the men who build and navigate the boats—“the passage providers, the white bulls . . . play[ing] the part of Zeus”— as heroic protagonists, their illegal work a form of perilous but necessary resistance. Kwassa Kwassa frames the contemporary consequences of more than a century of colonial subjugation as its own kind of elegiac myth, as strange and unreal as Europe’s birth. In its disturbingly beautiful telling of the Comoros and its history, and in its ability to create poignant symbolism that echoes beyond the specificity of this place, Kwassa Kwassa allows us to reconsider the nature of national identity and political geographies, offering a somber meditation on everyday people the world over who risk their lives for unknown opportunities on other shores.

Diana Nawi Associate Curator

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1103 Biscayne Blvd. Miami, FL 33132305 375 3000info@pamm.orgpamm.org

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Project Gallery: SUPERFLEXOctober 21, 2016–April 23, 2017

SUPERFLEXBjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen: b. 1969, Copenhagen; lives in CopenhagenJakob Fenger: b. 1968, Copenhagen; lives in CopenhagenRasmus Nielsen: b. 1969, Copenhagen; lives in Copenhagen

SUPERFLEX, Kwassa Kwassa, 2015Digital color video, with sound, 17 min. Directed by Tuan Andrew Nguyen and SUPERFLEXCourtesy the artists, Nils Stærk, Copenhagen, and 1301PE Gallery, Los Angeles

Project Gallery: SUPERFLEX is organized by Pérez Art Museum Miami Associate Curator Diana Nawi. This exhibition is presented by Bank of America with support provided by Knight Foundation. Kwassa Kwassa was commissioned by Beaufort Beyond Borders 2015 and Marrakech Biennale 6 and supported by Danish Art Council.