*125 copies limited edition* Heliogram is a limited edition book/flexi disc that combines field recordings made by Robin Watkins and a series of risograph prints by Nina Canell. In their own way, they examine the ecological effects of static electricity by exploiting a field where different energy signatures intertwine. For this project, Robin Watkins used a portable device to modulate energy within the audible range, capturing a stream of humming harmonics in real time. Locating low-frequency audio signals from the wings of gnats in the magnetosphere, it is a direct channelling of atmospheric electricity, pressed onto a transparent flexible foil disc.
The recording is accompanied by 12 risograph-printed images from Nina Canell's Polyethylene Feels series. Provoked by the branching of microcharges, copper particles follow the indeterminate behaviour of ions, revealing sudden and complex arrangements on sheets of polyethylene plastic. Accumulations and traces left by fingers, hair, mechanical production processes and folding are some of the electrostatic presences that are inscribed in the prints. Robin Watkins (born in 1980 in Stockholm, lives and works in Berlin) is an Irish-Swedish artist who studied at the Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dublin from 2001 to 2005. He has presented sound works at ICA, London (2009), Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2010), Kunsthaus Glarus (2011), Mount Analogue, Stockholm (2013), Witte de With, Rotterdam (2015) and La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2017).
The installations of Nina Canell (born in 1979 in Växjö, Sweden, lives and works in Berlin) give substance to the immaterial and the lightness of everyday life. The natural materials she uses – water, stones, air, earth, wood and copper – are subjected to electric arcs or heat sources, creating delicate and ephemeral physical reactions that highlight and reveal our innate relationship with our immediate environment. Nina Canell's works have been exhibited at the Moderna Museet (Stockholm), the Camden Arts Centre (London), the Sydney Biennale, MoMA and the Swiss Institute (New York), as well as at the 13th Lyon Biennale.
