Seen on Screen: Ekstrem
Myska #2 Guculia.Tini by Danuta Kril (image: Fabian Frinzel).
What is the perfect form? For Physical 100, the optimum human physique is quantifiable through a series of highly produced athletic challenges.
This new South Korean gameshow takes 100 burly participants and puts them through a series of gruellingly creative physical challenges. The contestants are drawn from different exercise tribes, with Olympic athletes rubbing toned shoulders with YouTube fitness influencers, soldiers sweating next to cheerleaders, and beefy car dealers competing alongside prize fighters. Only one can reign supreme and claim the 300m KRW (£192,000) prize. It’s an addictive show that will have workout-haters researching
gym memberships.
Discerning the ultimate form for a chair is trickier. Like human bodies, they generally have a set number of legs, a back and a seat,[1] but almost infinite variations on the themes of shape and strength. But gathering 100 of design’s most lauded chairs into a room for a sitting marathon would not make gripping television.
Body and chair do, however, collide in the opening of Physical 100’s fourth episode, ‘The Underdogs’, as the 50 remaining contestants enter a swanky lounge to mingle and avail themselves of the facilities. Highlights include a fancy open gym setup and a floor-to-ceiling wall display of all the backlit protein supplements, powders and snacks
a gym-rat could desire. But peeking out from a corner of the camera-filled space is a chair contender: Ekstrem by Norwegian designer Terje Ekstrøm.
Debuting in 1984, Ekstrem’s wiggly geometry made it one of Norway’s first postmodern designs. Like the cast of Physical 100, it has a core of steel – although here, quite literally. A foam layer provides comfortable padding, with a colourful woollen cover that is knitted into a tube and pulled over this like a sock.
Aside from its arresting visual appearance, Ekstrem’s appeal lies in the multiplicity of seating styles it affords. Along with the traditional (and some might say, staid) mode of upright back, forward facing, two feet on the ground, you can sit sideways with your legs together or hooked over an arm rest, or turn around to face the other way with the backrest as an armrest.
Ekstrem, with its one form containing a multitude of functions, offers a nice thematic mirror to Physical 100. Our bodies may follow a general blueprint, but there are many ways they can be used. The programme’s first challenge invited contestants to hang from a bar over a pool, demonstrating that more muscle does not always guarantee prowess. As bodybuilders and the overly hench splashed down, a cross-fitter, gymnast, drill sergeant, firefighter and ice-climbing mountain rescuer prevailed. And sometimes vintage is better, as demonstrated by 47-year-old mixed martial artist Choo Sung-hoon, who vows to demonstrate the power of the middle-aged. There are as many ways to sit as there are to be strong.
1. Yes, I know there are many exceptions to this. Please don’t come for me, chair nerds.
Words India Block
Photographs Leonhard Rothmoser
This article was originally published in Disegno #35. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.