About
Who we are:
post doom romance
What Mykel Boyd and seah (Chelsea Heikes) have in common when forming their collaborative artist group, post doom romance, is a keen eye and ear for textures. In both sound and image, we have been solo artists working both in the music industry and the fine arts world. Together, we produce sound, video, and still image compositions that are sensitively layered and textural. Our aesthetic is such that we do not heavy-handedly depict. Rather, we ruminate together in the feeling space of both literary and physical spaces, building our aural and visual language through subtle layering of manipulated field recordings.
In November of 2021 post doom romance started “prairie transmissions”, a 13 part audio/visual cycle through 11 months, exploring the inner / outer vibrations of the landscape we inhabit.
These recordings were captured, processed, layered, manipulated and composed in the prairies around our home over the course of one year. This cycle takes the listener through our audio landscape filtered through our ears. A document of time / space / feeling. An attempt to witness the land, its memories, vibrations and gradient shifts. This entire collection of 13 tracks (duration 126 minutes) and photographs will be published in late 2023.
A transmission from where we are, to where you are.
seah
All of seah’s work stems from a sensorial sensitivity from decades long movement research in Butoh, Body Weather Laboratory, Noguchi Taiso, and Somatic Movement, as well as extended periods of time spent in remote wilderness areas. These movement practices embody Deleuze and Guattari’s nomadology, the shifting terrain of the psyche - a beingness that is fluid, always in transition, “becoming”. This nomadic subjectivity is necessary for becoming-imperceptible, a state which seah describes as a de-centering of recognizable “humanness” that allows for somatic, phenomenological experiences of what it means to be posthuman.
Since 2011, seah has spent a great deal of time tracing waterways. “Fluvial Traces” follows rivers using feet, bike, or paddle boat and has included the Mae Nam Ping in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the Detroit River, and a river in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. The larger arc of “Water Tracings” includes various waterways in San Francisco/Oakland, Venice, Italy, and the Finnish Archipelago.
seah released ‘conduits of the hydrosphere” in 2022, a cd/book that is a physical manifestation of the investigations into the water that surrounds us all. Recently ‘clouds & spectres” was released, focusing on the experience of being a water body while feeling cloud energy move through the self.
seah gives lectures on her art practice, Posthumanism and Nomadic Theory, as well as movement/technology workshops at universities, colleges, conferences, festivals, and culture centers throughout the world. Most recently seah presented “body / bodily resonance” as a workshop while also showing and talking about work from “conduits of the hydrosphere” at the Harvard University Department of Music
mykel boyd
(°1970, Kankakee,IL) makes sound recordings, conceptual artworks, photos, installations and films. By experimenting with aleatoric processes, Boyd creates work in which a fascination with the clarity of content and an uncompromising attitude towards conceptual and minimal art can be found. The work is aloof and systematic and a cool and neutral imagery is used.
His practice provides a useful set of allegorical tools for maneuvering with a pseudo-minimalist approach in the world of conceptual art: these meticulously planned works resound and resonate with images culled from the fantastical realm of imagination. With a subtle minimalistic approach, he formalizes the coincidental and emphasizes the conscious process of composition that is behind the seemingly random works. The thought processes, which are supposedly private, highly subjective and unfiltered in their references to dream worlds, are frequently revealed as assemblages.
His works feature coincidental, accidental and unexpected connections which make it possible to revise art history and, even better, to complement it. Combining unrelated aspects lead to surprising analogies. By applying abstraction, he creates intense personal moments masterfully created by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and round in circles.
His works do not reference recognizable forms. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted.
Boyd is the founder and curator of the somnimage audio arts label. Over the past 25 he has released recordings by sound artists from around the world, as well as promoting live events, performing and exhibiting photography.
post doom romance
What Mykel Boyd and seah (Chelsea Heikes) have in common when forming their collaborative artist group, post doom romance, is a keen eye and ear for textures. In both sound and image, we have been solo artists working both in the music industry and the fine arts world. Together, we produce sound, video, and still image compositions that are sensitively layered and textural. Our aesthetic is such that we do not heavy-handedly depict. Rather, we ruminate together in the feeling space of both literary and physical spaces, building our aural and visual language through subtle layering of manipulated field recordings.
In November of 2021 post doom romance started “prairie transmissions”, a 13 part audio/visual cycle through 11 months, exploring the inner / outer vibrations of the landscape we inhabit.
These recordings were captured, processed, layered, manipulated and composed in the prairies around our home over the course of one year. This cycle takes the listener through our audio landscape filtered through our ears. A document of time / space / feeling. An attempt to witness the land, its memories, vibrations and gradient shifts. This entire collection of 13 tracks (duration 126 minutes) and photographs will be published in late 2023.
A transmission from where we are, to where you are.
seah
All of seah’s work stems from a sensorial sensitivity from decades long movement research in Butoh, Body Weather Laboratory, Noguchi Taiso, and Somatic Movement, as well as extended periods of time spent in remote wilderness areas. These movement practices embody Deleuze and Guattari’s nomadology, the shifting terrain of the psyche - a beingness that is fluid, always in transition, “becoming”. This nomadic subjectivity is necessary for becoming-imperceptible, a state which seah describes as a de-centering of recognizable “humanness” that allows for somatic, phenomenological experiences of what it means to be posthuman.
Since 2011, seah has spent a great deal of time tracing waterways. “Fluvial Traces” follows rivers using feet, bike, or paddle boat and has included the Mae Nam Ping in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the Detroit River, and a river in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. The larger arc of “Water Tracings” includes various waterways in San Francisco/Oakland, Venice, Italy, and the Finnish Archipelago.
seah released ‘conduits of the hydrosphere” in 2022, a cd/book that is a physical manifestation of the investigations into the water that surrounds us all. Recently ‘clouds & spectres” was released, focusing on the experience of being a water body while feeling cloud energy move through the self.
seah gives lectures on her art practice, Posthumanism and Nomadic Theory, as well as movement/technology workshops at universities, colleges, conferences, festivals, and culture centers throughout the world. Most recently seah presented “body / bodily resonance” as a workshop while also showing and talking about work from “conduits of the hydrosphere” at the Harvard University Department of Music
mykel boyd
(°1970, Kankakee,IL) makes sound recordings, conceptual artworks, photos, installations and films. By experimenting with aleatoric processes, Boyd creates work in which a fascination with the clarity of content and an uncompromising attitude towards conceptual and minimal art can be found. The work is aloof and systematic and a cool and neutral imagery is used.
His practice provides a useful set of allegorical tools for maneuvering with a pseudo-minimalist approach in the world of conceptual art: these meticulously planned works resound and resonate with images culled from the fantastical realm of imagination. With a subtle minimalistic approach, he formalizes the coincidental and emphasizes the conscious process of composition that is behind the seemingly random works. The thought processes, which are supposedly private, highly subjective and unfiltered in their references to dream worlds, are frequently revealed as assemblages.
His works feature coincidental, accidental and unexpected connections which make it possible to revise art history and, even better, to complement it. Combining unrelated aspects lead to surprising analogies. By applying abstraction, he creates intense personal moments masterfully created by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and round in circles.
His works do not reference recognizable forms. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted.
Boyd is the founder and curator of the somnimage audio arts label. Over the past 25 he has released recordings by sound artists from around the world, as well as promoting live events, performing and exhibiting photography.