Superflex: 'We wanted to give voices and bodies to these abstract concepts of borders and identities'

Superflex’s film Western Rampart is set in Vestvolden, in the south-west of Copenhagen, where a 14 km rampart was built between 1888 and 1892. This defensive wall has been obsolete since World War I. A combination of visual and narrative poetry, magical realism and documentary, Western Rampart is a fable featuring a gigantic fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria), in conversation with the wall. While the rampart argues for borders and walls, the mushroom advocates for circulation and transformation. Curator Filiipa Ramos speaks to the Danish collective, comprised of Rasmus Nielsen, Jakob Fenger, and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen to find out more about the work. 

Filipa Ramos: In your film Western Rampart, a fly agaric mushroom has a conversation with a century-old fortification. How did you come up with this idea in the first place?

SUPERFLEX: The mushroom acts as antithesis to the idea of borders, which is what a rampart is, fundamentally.  Mushrooms break down organic material and thereby renew an ever-lasting cycle of life and evolution. At the same time, for centuries, this particular mushroom has been used as a psychoactive drug that breaks down the borders between reality and fantasy. Historically used by indigenous people of the Ural Mountains, the Nordic Vikings as well as modern day’s psychonauts, it creates a connection with nature and sets a scene for a magical reality. It is within this fantastic sphere that the discussion of the nature of borders takes place. So the idea was to give voices and bodies to these abstract concepts of borders and identities, inside versus outside.

FR: The way tiny details of nature are filmed is one of the most impressive features of the film. How did you choose the elements and life forms that you included in the film?

S: A dogma of the film was to only shoot on the location of the rampart, which is in the suburbs of Copenhagen, and only use elements we could find and gather there. We did have some overall ideas of how to show transgression, but a lot of improvisation took place at location. The close-up shots of insects, dripping water, and slow movements of nature was made to illustrate a level of magic and constant progression. If we look close enough at nature, we find a multitude of lifeforms and constant cycle of things and organisms growing and dying, being built and broken down again. The flower scene was made to show how the rampart evolves into a state of new understanding due the muscimol (the main psychoactive component of Amanita muscaria mushrooms) growing inside it. It is the rampart’s mushroom trip, so to say.

FR: The film puts in evidence how architecture and nature—which are also two frequent presences of your work—speak a different language and have different ways of being in the world. Will the mushroom and the rampart ever understand one another?

S: As the mushroom and the rampart are each other’s antitheses, perhaps they are not meant to understand each other. At one point, the rampart states that there is ‘no inside without outside.’ In a way, this summarizes the juxtaposing positions they represent and also their mutual dependence on each other. What could the mushroom transgress in a world of no borders? And what will be the purpose of a rampart if nothing can penetrate its borders? These positions can be replicated to the relationship of nature and culture, where we need one to define the other. 

In short: no, they will probably never be able to understand each other.

If a mushroom would be able to change into a rampart would it even be a mushroom anymore?