Resources

(OU)VERT film portrait

The (OU)VERT research project has been portrayed in a film by the Novo Nordisk Foundation – “Thinking less green” (video only for the Danish version), produced for the foundation’s News Room where selected awarded academic projects are presented. (OU)VERT – An interdisciplinary Investigation into GREEN as Medium is currently being established thanks to a Mads Øvlisen postdoctoral fellowship in art & bio- and natural sciences over 2 years. The film focuses on the paradox that green is often seen as the color of nature and health, chosen to elicit sympathy for a cause ranging from economics and biotechnology to food, while its pervasive and unreflecting use is turning into misuse and finally tends to obstruct interdisciplinary reflection and action between the humanities and the natural sciences. The reportage insists on the need to create a new language across disciplines instead of the current superficial green language.

HeHe book release

The recently published book Man Made Clouds by the artists collective HeHe (Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen) promises to become a milestone in Greenness Studies. Based on HeHe’s artistic practice dealing with the social, industrial and ecological paradoxes that result from today's technological landscapes, the publication offers a unique study into the perception of atmospheric emissions from an artistic, political and ecological perspective. In the contributions by Jens Hauser, Noortje Marres, Gunnar Schmidt, Malcom Miles Jean-Marc Chomaz and the artists themselves, green is deconstructed as a chameleon color, oscillating between consoling, comforting nature and sudden, alarming toxicity: green serves an unmasking function in the work of HeHe, where it is revealed as the camouflage of the technological. The most emblematic is Nuage vert (Green Cloud) where a laser beam is used to draw an outline onto a cloud released by a power plant, the green cloud changing in size relative to the energy consumption of local residents. The Man Made Clouds book is also a work of craft: Each book contains an ex-libris of smokeable paper, hand-made from 100% organic tobacco specially cultivated by the artists.

HeHe (ed.): Man Made Clouds. Éditions Hyx, 2016. Bilingual English-French, 496 pages, 235 illustrations, ISBN 978-2-910385-77-4.