Man Made Clouds

HeHe in the clouds

HeHe, Helen Evans (UK, 1972) and Heiko Hansen (Germany, 1970), are an artist duo based in Paris. Their work reflects on the energy needs of contemporary life, visualising social, industrial and ecological paradoxes through installations and performances of technological landscapes. The repertoire of HeHe includes worst case technological accidents, exposing the hidden dimensions and implications of ecological threats. The actors of HeHe's performance installations are the machines themselves: oil rigs, nuclear power plants, incinerators, cars, cranes, trains, and the electric devices of mass consumption. Installed in real world environments or eerie staged settings, technology is staged, placed in apocalyptic chromatic landscapes and dressed in an unnatural green afterglow.

"Man Made Clouds"

Edited by the artists, Man Made Clouds is based on a series of artistic interventions and a cultural analysis of atmospheric emissions by six authors.

Natural clouds occupy a special place in our imagination, their countless forms and meanings offer infinite possibilities for metaphor. HeHe's projects use clouds as a visual metaphor to aestheticise toxin coated atmospheric emissions. Smog, radioactive clouds, clouds produced by exhaust fumes, cigarettes or industrial emissions are visualised, highlighted, outlined, coloured or put under the spotlight, to alert us— not without humour—on our arrival in the Anthropocene age.

Of the fifteen projects in the book, the most ambitious and emblematic is Nuage vert (Green Cloud) which earned the prestigious Golden Nica at the festival Ars Electronica in 2008. The book includes original documentation on the reception of Nuage Vert which sparked a political controversy when it was staged on a waste incinerator cloud in Saint Ouen (2009) and Ivry-sur-Seine (2010).

Man Made Clouds is also a work of craft. Each book contains an ex-libris of smokeable paper, hand-made from 100% organic tobacco, specially cultivated in the soil of Pollinaria, Abruzzo, Italy