Curatorial Notes presents a series of essays written by leading art directors and curators, introducing the artists they are in conversation with for the CHART Talks Programme 2026.
In this essay, Alice Sharp, Artistic Director of Invisible Dust, offers a focused entry point into SUPERFLEX’s new permanent work, Super Kello, created for Climate Clock, an art trail in Oulu, the European Capital of Culture 2026. She traces the ideas, materials and recurring questions that shape the group’s practice.
Rasmus Rosengren Nielsen from SUPERFLEX in front of Super Kello created for Climate Clock in Oulu, the European Capital of Culture 2026
Courtesy of the artist and von Bartha. Photo by Rosa Ruuskanen
Our world has become one where seconds not even minutes matter. A machine-time world which is damaging our relationship to the planet and each other. Danish artists group SUPERFLEX have created a new work ‘Super Kello’ (Kello is both bell and clock in Finnish) which draws us back to a time before machines, to a time of myths.
Super Kello is a permanent new work for ‘Climate Clock’ an art trail in Oulu, EU Capital of Culture 2026 in Northern Finland for which I am the curator. One of the reasons I became interested in SUPERFLEX was their wonderful combinations of human behaviour and natural things; fish habitats and sculpted stone, MacDonalds and climate flooding, octopus and playgrounds, multi person swings and art galleries but also their focus on looking at climate change and time. For Oulu they have combined a new reading of ‘The Odyssey’ with a bell shaped stone sculpture.
"SUPERFLEX’s critique of our fast time aligns to an innate sense that most of us feel as AI starts to govern our lives: that we feel distracted, lost, adrift."
Writer, Curator and Founder of Invisible Dust
SUPERFLEX, Super Kello, 2026
Courtesy of the artists and von Bartha. Photo by Maija Toivanen
Super Kello provides the residents of Kello, a harbour in Haukipudas, with a place, a safe haven, in which to sit, rest, and consider. It faces out to sea like a light house connecting the marine world to land; building a bridge between the underwater ecosystem and human habitation and welcoming fishing boats into safety. Like in medieval times before clocks and wrist watches the church bell was the local messenger and marker of time.
In dialogue with the 'Climate Clock' curatorial concept of the importance of reconnecting to nature’s time, they have worked with Peter Chilvers to create a ‘slow’ sound element. It broadcasts Pentti Saarikoski’s Finnish translation of Homer's ancient Greek epic ‘The Odyssey’, spoken by a local fisherwoman Elina Halonen. Unlike the new ‘The Odyssey’ film by Christopher Nolan (2h 52m) the Super Kello version is read very slowly, one word per hour over the course of ten years. This echoes the story of Odysseus, King of Ithaca, who wanders for 10 years, making the time of the story literal so we experience time at a slower pace and connects to the cyclical nature of time, in The Odyssey this flows through the phases of the moon.
The material that SUPERFLEX has chosen for many of their sculptures, like Super Kello, is a pink marble, which demonstrates cyclical time through the processes of geology. The marble is sourced from the earth and is around 350–400 million years old and they say it will provide a habitat for fish when the sea levels rise. Stone is the material of both the ancient past and the sustainable future. Stone buildings from a thousand years ago and more; of the Greeks, Vikings and the Normans are still standing and stone has ten per cent of the carbon footprint of concrete.
Homer's poem contrasts the wandering changes of "historic" time with the permanence of "mythic" time. Where we, like Odysseus, view ourselves as the same, though we are constantly searching for ourselves and safety in a changing world. The Greek myths still enable us to understand ourselves and our world. This focus on artists as storytellers is one of the many reasons that SUPERFLEX, and artists are so important. They create a mythic bell which in our imaginations might call us home.
SUPERFELX, Super Kello, 2026
Courtesy of the artists and von Bartha. Photo by Maija Toivanen
SUPERFLEX, Super Kello (detail), 2026
Courtesy of the artists and von Bartha. Photo by Maija Toivanen
Time is deeply connected to our scientific understanding of climate change. SUPERFLEX’s idea of slowing time connects to the human desire to do so, so that we don’t face its disastrous consequences soon. In fact the scientists measure the way we are forcing upon nature an unnatural pace of change at odds with the time that nature would like to take.
Much like the scene in ‘The Odyssey’ film where Odysseus walks alone across a dry sea, the backdrop of Super Kello in winter is often a lone fisherman walking over the white frozen sea. What will the sculpture look out on in a hundred years will the Baltic melt like the Arctic?
SUPERFEX critique of our fast time also aligns to an innate sense that most of us feel as AI starts to govern our lives so that we can’t remember, we feel distracted, lost, adrift; wanting something or someone else to take responsibility, which of course is exactly where the global tech giants want us. SUPERFLEX's work urges us to pause, decelerate and reconnect to nature’s time and rhythm; the changing of the seasons, the point of the sun in the sky and become once again interrelated to plants and animals and natural systems around us; to stop forcing time and live within the earth's natural clock.
"SUPERFLEX's work urges us to pause, decelerate and reconnect to nature's time and rhythm; to stop forcing time and live within the earth's natural clock."
Writer, Curator and Founder of Invisible Dust
SUPERFLEX was founded in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, and Rasmus Rosengren Nielsen. Conceived as an expanded collective, SUPERFLEX has consistently worked with a wide variety of collaborators, from gardeners to engineers to audience members.
Engaging with alternative models for the creation of social and economic organisation, works have taken the form of energy systems, beverages, sculptures, copies, hypnosis sessions, infrastructure, paintings, plant nurseries, contracts, and public spaces.
SUPERFLEX is represented by von Bartha.
Photo by Daniel Stjerne
Alice Sharp is a writer and curator who brings her thinking together with artists, scientists and specialists across the world to create new ideas to navigate our future. Sharp founded Invisible Dust based in the UK in 2009 and is one of the most experienced speakers on arts, science and climate change internationally.
In 2026 she collaborated with seven world leading artists on ‘Climate Clock’ new public artworks ‘reconnecting us with nature's time’ for Oulu EU Capital of Culture, Finland.
Photo by Rosa Ruuskanen
