Courtesy of Exhibitions & Visual Research Centre at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design. Photo: Ross Fraser McLean.


HeHe: When the Future Was about Fracking

Centrespace, Visual Research Centre, DCA, 152 Nethergate Dundee DD1 4DY

Exhibition: 22 April-18 May 2016

Monday-Saturday 12pm-4pm. Sunday closed

Free entrance

Preview & Curator’s Talk by Rob La Frenais: Thursday 21 April, 5.30-7.30pm

Closing Event with performance-lecture by HeHe and readings by poet Alec Finlay: Wednesday 18 May, 5pm


When the Future Was about Fracking is a sequel, specially designed for Scotland, of the Paris-based artist group HeHe‘s Fracking Futures, which first took place in north-west England, also a contested site for hydraulic fracking.

The Guardian wrote at the time: ‘It is one of the biggest, most polarising issues there is, but artists who have created an indoor tracking installation insist they are not trying to sway opinion either way. we want to create an emotionally engaging experience. People can then go away and come to their own conclusions,” said Heiko Hansen, who with his partner, Helen Evans, has recreated the sounds, tremors and flames you would get from a fracking operation.’

This time, the group re-enact a doomed landscape after extensive fracking, with leaking hissing ghostly wellheads, in the swirling mist of a post-apocalyptic abandoned excavation site, in the middle of a city centre, in Centrespace within DJCAD’s Visual Research Centre located on the lower levels of the DCA.

HeHe‘s often mischievous yet accurate miniaturisations of potential and actual global disasters have intrigued audiences worldwide, and this is the first time their work will be seen in Scotland.

When the Future Was about Fracklng is curated by Rob La Frenais in collaboration with Cooper Gallery DJCAD and is part of the Energy Ethics conference, organised by Mette M. High of University of St Andrews. This installation was originally commissioned by FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) and Arts Catalyst. Funded by the British Academy, Creative Scotland and the Russell Trust.

Interview with the artists