HeHe





Tobacco paper experiments at Fabriano, mixing the first organic glue to bind tobacco and applying onto the paper making screen




First tobacco paper goes onto felt support, into high pressure squeezer and drying band and comes out in one piece




Exhibition in Pollinaria gallery, with tobacco extract, plants and smoking research for the Man Made Clouds Book




Planting the burley tobacco shoots on the 2 May 2010










Pollinaria and HeHe present their joint farming project, focused on the cultivation and manufacture of the artist’s book Man Made Clouds. This limited series of books will be created from organic tobacco plants subtracted to the usual channels of tobacco industry and grown in the Pollinaria fields. On May 2nd 2010, the public was physically involved in the book farming process by participating in the tobacco planting operations. The leaves will be harvested in summer and later manufactured in order to form the basic material for the making of the book. Man Made Clouds - tobacco edition is scheduled for release in 2011, to coincide with the international launch of the standard edition of the book

Since summer 2009, HeHe have been concentrating their work with Pollinaria on the research and concept for their book Man Made Clouds. The book will take the form of a visual anthology focusing on the representation of man-made emissions in the past and their gradual disappearance in contemporary culture. In popular culture the meaning of man-made clouds has reflected the concerns of different periods: they have been used as a sign of economic prosperity, to express spiritual energy, as an emblem for workers’ revolution and more recently as the ultimate icon of pollution. In HeHe’s projects cloud forms have been used as a visual metaphor to aestheticise emissions. The book will present essays and projects that offer alternative readings for today’s man-made clouds which challenge the prevailing representations. The first part of the book will weave a visual and narrative thread that connects tobacco smoking, industrial emissions and air pollution. The second part will report HeHe’s varied ironic interventions on the theme of man-made clouds and their multiform meanings, including an extensive documentation of the Nuage Vert project and other works from the Pollstream series. At a time when the relationship between art and ecology is yet again highly topical, Man Made Clouds proposes an original view of the perception of emissions, from an artistic and historical perspective. The book aims to bring man-made clouds back into view by offering an aesthetic space that provokes a more profound reflection about our inseparable relationship to the environment

In reference to the Man Made Clouds publication, the tobacco book is literally meant to go up in fumes... The development for the tobacco book encompasses the entire cycle of organic product development: the tobacco is currently cultivated in Pollinaria and research is in progress in a hand-made paper factory in Fabriano to make paper from the tobacco leaves. In a humorous reversal of the term "book farming", the tobacco book project employs artisanal and empirical processes for "farming a book"

http://www.pollinaria.org/





Tobacco shoots June 2010


Growing July 2010





Harvest September 2010









Second harvest September 2010