Bishop Hill Diary dates: Dundee edition
Apr 28, 2016 Diary dates Energy: gas PRESS RELEASE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE
Art exhibition poses questions on the issue of fracking
Photo opportunity: 5:15pm Thursday April 21st. Centrespace Gallery, Dundee Contemporary Arts.
University of Dundee’s Centrespace Gallery will be home to a new contemporary art exhibition, honing in on the contested operation of fracking.
‘When The Future Was About Fracking’ opens tomorrow and is an immersive installation by Paris-based artists’ group HeHe. It depicts a doomed landscape after extensive hydraulic fracking. They will use the space to display leaky hissing ghostly wellheads. This will also mark HeHe’s first ever exhibition in Scotland.
The exhibition has been curated by internationally renowned Rob La Frenais, in collaboration with Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone, College of Art and Design andthe University of St Andrews research fellow Mette High.
Organiser Mette High said, “I am an anthropologist who does oil field research. I wanted to bring some of the concerns from the US oil fields right here, to Dundee and to Scotland. Art is an amazing medium for getting people to reflect and I was inspired by that potential.
“I really hope lots of people will pop by the Centrespace Gallery. It is an ambitious, provocative installation that does not seek to tell people what they should think. It has been crucial for both the artists and myself that this installation lets people make up their own minds. It isn’t our job to tell people what they should think, but it is our job to create environments in which such reflection can happen.”
The exhibition runs until May 18th and is open Monday to Saturday 12-4pm.
There will also be a preview evening will be held on Thursday, 21th April from 5.30-7.30pm when curator Rob La Frenais will give a tour at 6pm.
The installation has been funded by Creative Scotland and the British Academy.
More information here.
Reader Comments (70)
Grrr... driving through the South Texas oil country, which I do from time to time, what is notable are the hideous HG Wells Martian invaders-sized windmills, not the low-to-ground, quiet and unobtrusive gas wells.
The scum liar schmucks posing as artists fabricating this faux art are just dishonest parasites- they are not advancing art, truth or beauty.
When is the Centrespace Gallery, Dundee Contemporary Art planning to hold an exhibition on "the contested issue of wind turbines"? I am sure their plans must be at an advanced stage by now.
Roy, as the science is settled on wind turbines, they may be concerned that the lights will go out during the exhibition, if the weather turns out nice again.
Indoor exhibitions being closed due to good weather, could open up a whole new chapter in the Climate Science Joke Book.
We can all feel the oppressive weight of CO2 choking us like the thick fog of the nightmare out of which extreme weather is spawned.
Read all about it in credible blogs like DeSmog, Skeptical Science, and Stoat.
Ayla, is the choking fog what stops wind turbines from generating electricity? It must be the thick fog that stops me from seeing them do anything useful.
This art event at Centrespace Gallery, Dundee Contemporary Arts, sadly, like so much contemporary art, is more a propaganda initiative than an exhibition of real art. All it needs now is the addition of a wind-turbine festooned with dead birds and bats.
Wind turbines are the propellers of hope that will carry humanity to a better world, a world of gentle hugs and encouraging smiles for everyone (dissent from deniers will result in summary executions), a world of boundless joy and leaping children, a world with perennial docile weather. Wind turbines are a foolproof investment in endless, infinite goodness.
Ayla
We hear your screams of pain for our abused planet beset by ever thickening CO2 fogs.
We see your vision of a bright shiny world decorated by the spinning lollipops of unbridled joy. (Pity about the birds).
We seek to bring this to pass. To this end Industries Ayla (I A Corp) will equip each new car with its own windmill. These will both disperse the choking CO2 mists and energize both our souls and the cars themselves. Cars will then speed along (pity about the wildlife), so spinning the windmills in an endless cycle of perpetual goodness.
Your design team, gathered from the scientific ranks of Desmog (now de Smog) and SkSci (now based at Aspen, Colorado), are experiencing minor teething problems, but are confident (from their models) of ultimate success.
Pray for us
Ayla is quite right, the producers of the Teletubbies have a lot to answer for.
Ayla.
Praise be, another convert! Moreover, one with similar opacity. Teletubbies?
Ayla with your steadfast opposition to Big Oyle (and all that sail in her), you are the thinking alarmist's wet dream.
However, depending on the climate scare du jour, you are also their dry dream, warm dream or cold dream.
Ayla you are mistress to all.
The installation was sponsored by HeHe so deserves to be laughed at.
They also appear to recycle their products as this article from 2013 indicates.
www.newscientist.com/article/dn23889-art-installation-brings-you-face-to-face-with-fracking/
Apr 28, 2016 at 7:19 PM | It doesn't add up...
We did destructive distillation of coal instead, being in Mansfield, which was a mining town at that time.
Neils, you could build it, and invite the media - and they'd devote all their airtime to covering the demo outside and interviewing a Green or an actress for their take on it.
Shale companies have got better things to do with their money than paint another target on their backs.
And I love it when the antis talk about "hydraulic" fracking.
As opposed to the other kind?
They are on a scientific level with Creationists and anti-vaxxers and if the media had any scruples they'd have been run out of town by now.
This thread has exercised by long term memory muscles. Mention of destructive coal distillation sent me back to a school visit to the local gasworks, where apart from experiencing all the variety of smells and tar dripping pipeworks, I was disappointed to find no pile of unwanted coal contaminants - I wanted to find fossil plants in the shale waste.
Then I remembered thrilling chemistry experiments like adding concentrated sulphuric acid to a test tube containing sugar. The emergence of steaming turds of black charcoal created great joy.
I suspect the joy of science today has largely gone, stifled to death by H and S regulations.
Alan, the joy of industry has also gone (to China and elsewhere) and replaced in its birthplace by irrational fears.
Then the media gets sentimental about the thing they helped to kill - after it's gone.
Does nobody else see Ayla as a piss take?
Nial. Everyone here knows Ayla is a pi88 merchant. However, her often outrageous, over the top diatribes are (we think) directed AGAINST alarmism. Her craft is so good that sometimes she causes just the slightest bit of unease about her allegiance.
I think BH would a far less colourful place without her presence. Long may she obfuscate and confuse.
Ayla.
Mass adoration over on the Kreb-bashing thread.
Rejoice!
It's Dundee - what do you expect?
Tested
Cake!