"The human ear. A gatherer of energy. A gatherer of sound. RPMs and BPMs. Satellites go up to the sky."
In the video Satellite, Nelson Henricks combines found footage and techno beats to question western society's ongoing obsession with science, technology and the future. Juxtaposing images derived from old educational films with absurd, aphoristic slogans, Henricks offers up a witty, entertaining and provocative commentary of our need to make sense of everything, at any cost.
Nelson Henricks was born in Bow Island, Alberta and is a graduate of the Alberta College of Art (1986). He moved to Montréal in 1991, where he received a BFA from Concordia University (1994). Henricks lives and works in Montréal, where he has taught art history and video production at Concordia University, McGill University, UQAM and Université de Montréal.
A musician, writer, curator and artist, Henricks is best known for his videotapes and video installations, which have been exhibited worldwide. A focus on his video work was presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of the Video Viewpoints series in 2000. A mid-career retrospective of his work was presented at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery in Montréal in 2010. Henricks’ work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery. He is currently completing a PhD at Université du Québec à Montréal.
His writings have been published in Fuse, Public and Coil magazines, and in the anthologies So, To Speak (Editions Artexte, 1999) and Lux (YYZ Press, 2000). Henricks co-edited an anthology of artists' video scripts entitled By the Skin of Their Tongues (YYZ Press, 1997) with Steve Reinke.
Henricks was the recipient of the Bell Canada Award in Video Art in 2002, the Board of Govenors’ Alumni Award of Excellence from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2005, and the Giverny Capital Prize in 2016.
Nelson Henricks is the curator of the compilation American Psycho(drama): Sigmund Freud vs. Henry Ford (1999)