Total Eclipse of the Heart, a multi-media collaboration by The H*E*R*D Group, comprised of Ireland’s Declan Rooney and South Korea’s Eunhye Hwang, will bring together various strands of the duo’s collaborative visual output in a performance at The Watermill Center on May 22. As Watermill Center’s Spring Artists-in-Residence, Rooney and Hwang have spent four weeks working at the Center with the support of the Arts Council, Ireland.

With Total Eclipse of the Heart, The H*E*R*D Group will use the Watermill Center’s architecture, geography, local community and environs as material and sites for video, live actions, installation and audio works—all to be interwoven into an interactive live performance.

Declan Rooney and Eunhye Hwang met in 2002 at the Performance Art class at the Braunschweig University of Art, Germany. While Rooney had earned his initial degree in Sculpture and Hwang in Painting, the duo began merging their diverse approaches and cultural histories into a working structure that has since achieved a clear balance of intent, with shared objectives and conceptual concerns.

Now based in Berlin, The H*E*R*D Group creates pieces primarily in alternative sites—apartments, studios, project rooms—working in mediums such as live performance, video, music production and self-published zines. The H*E*R*D Group has exhibited in locations such as Marienborg Kunst in Trondheim Norway, Hotel Ballymun in Dublin Ireland and in Mooheoga, Seoul Korea. In 2009, The Group have performed at the Villa Vaudeville in Hannover Germany and exhibited at Kunstprojects in Berlin.

The Arts Council, Ireland is the national agency for funding, developing and promoting the arts in Ireland. Working in partnership with artists, arts organizations, public policy makers and others, the Council recognizes that the arts have a central and distinctive contribution to make to our evolving society. Established in 1951, to stimulate public interest in and promote the knowledge, appreciation and practice of the arts, the Council is an autonomous body, which is under the aegis of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism.