HeHe «Catastrophe Domestiques Nº 1: Flyrony»

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HeHe (Helen Evans & Heiko Hansen) UK/D/F: Catastrophe Domestique Nº 1: Flyrony, 2010 (Photo: HeHe)

HeHe: Catastrophes Domestiques N° 1: Flyrony
Installation 2010

The English/German artist couple HeHe (Helen Evans/Heiko Hansen) works on the borderline of art, critical design, and social intervention. Their project “Nuage Vert” (2008), which turned the vapour released by a coal power plant in Helsinki into a green cloud, made them famous. The project was closely tied to an action conceived in cooperation with local residents, calling for a reduction in the consumption of electric power: The cloud grew bigger and brighter the less power was used.
This large-scale project emphasises the aesthetic strategy that is also deployed in “Flyrony” – to make things hidden visible and to prompt us, in a humorous and easy-going way, to start looking at things in a different way, to start rethinking. The electric iron is a good example for the electrification of household appliances in the 1950s, times when new technical gadgets promised functionality and cleanliness, and to free housewives from the drudgery of age-old household chores. Of course, the package slip does not say that the iron, just like the hair dryer by the way, consumes a lot of electric power, and thus, actually could be called a real «polluter», especially if you iron a lot. “Flyrony”, with its aerodynamically elegant circling and its trace of vapour ironically shows these multiple links between consumption, psyche, and the belief in progress as well as their hidden flip sides.
 

link: / hehe.org