Bee-pocalypse, oder?
Plan Bienen was featured on the Doomsday podcast. Many thanks to Wendy John for the chat. There are some links and references on the podcast’s blog here.
Plan Bienen in Animaladies
Notgeld and other Stadt Imkerei Austausch paraphernalia have been included in the Animaladies exhibition, postcard project and symposium at Interlude Gallery, 11–22 July 2016 in Sydney, Australia, curated by Madeleine Boyd, Melissa Boyde and Yvette Watt.
According to the catalogue:
The term Animaladies was coined by Fiona Probyn-Rapsey with an intention to reframe stereotypical cultural connections between madness, species, race and gender. Social marginalisation of animal advocates, animal carers and animal studies scholars is resisted in the works shown in this exhibition. The artists in Animaladies reveal instead how the crazy love of the animal advocate for non-human species can engender forms of courageous wisdom and persistence in the face of impossibilities and improbabilities.
A Peer Review Journal About: Excessive Research
Our text, ‘Plan Bienen: Sharing (in) the more-than-human city’ has been published in the latest APRJA, an open-access research journal launched at Transmediale: Conversation Piece Berlin 2016. The publication is the outcome of a masterclass that Tessa participated in, organised by DARC (Digital Aesthetics Research Centre), Aarhus University, School of Communication and Culture in partnership with Liverpool John Moores University and the Liverpool Biennial.
The notion of ‘excess’ energy is central to Bataille’s thinking. He takes the superabundance of energy, beginning from the infinite outpouring of solar energy or the surpluses produced by life’s basic chemical reactions, as the norm for organisms. In other words, an organism in Bataille’s general economy, unlike the rational actors of classical economy (Capitalist and Marxist alike) who are motivated by scarcity, normally has an excess of energy available to it. This extra energy can be used productively for the organism’s growth or it can be lavishly expended. Bataille insists that an organism’s growth or expansion always runs up against limits and becomes impossible. The wasting of this energy is a ‘luxury’ characteristic of any society. ‘The accursed share’ refers to this excess, destined for waste.
A recording of the panel at Transmediale that Sumugan participated in is below:
Plan Bienen at Neolife
Sumugan presented Plan Bienen at Neolife, the Inaugural (Rest of the World) Society for Literature, Science and the Arts Conference organised by SymbioticA at the University of Western Australia, 1–3 October. Our working paper ‘Disappearing Humans’, a corollary to ‘Disappearing Bees’, was delivered in a session chaired by Mike Bianco, another artist and researcher whose ‘Humyn-honeybee’ project we are eagerly anticipating.
‘Statements of Profits and Loss / Rates of Exchange’ Art Laboratory Berlin
In June we presented ‘Statements of Profits and Loss’ at Art Laboratory Berlin. The exhibition showcased three Notgeld designs, documenting exchanges of honey – for various things – that took place last year between Oliver Rudzick and Lucinda Dayhew, Bärbel Rothhaar and Valentina Karga, and Jana Schroeder and Biljana Pais. The Notgeld are produced in editions of three: one gifted to each participant in the exchange, and one for the bees. Theirs were mounted inside a frame that would usually hold wax comb, ready to drop into a hive, and loaned to us for the exhibition.
Also on display was… material relating to our research, including a selection of historic Notgeld, books, a lump of coal, artefacts documenting barter economies in Germany and other paraphernalia relating to beekeeping and share networks currently operating in Berlin.
Leaning against one wall was a bicycle we had procured from a local bicycle share network, bikesurf berlin. Fitted out with a portable cooker, pans and utensils, this assemblage marked the presence of die Stillewald Küche, a speculative mobile kitchen serving food from a future in which there are no more bees, ie. cooking only with ingredients not requiring pollination by bees. This was also a functional prop for an (as yet) unrealised performance work, ‘Wake in Flight’, a memorial ceremony for departed bees to be held in an overgrown cemetery.
On the final day of the exhibition we hosted ‘Rates of Exchange–A Discursive Sonntagsbrunch’, a brunch-conversation about reciprocity and relations in the multispecies city, during which participants made notes on a large paper map on the table, in exchange for an extravagant meal made using only ingredients that are pollinated by bees (coffee, berries, chestnut lemon curd tart, buckwheat tomato tart, summer berry tarts…). On one end of the map was ‘bee ecologies’, and on the other ‘economic systems’. Together we attempted to address such questions as: what promising new modes of exchange could offer a way out of current crises in these two areas? What are the limits of exchange? How can value be measured differently?
Guests included Heinz Risse, the beekeeper at Prinzessinnengarten, and the artist and beekeeper Bärbel Rothhaar. The meal began with a glass of tap water and a humble dish of oatcakes and mushrooms provided by die Stillwald Küche … as the conversation proceeded, pots of tea and coffee were introduced until we eventually removed the glass coverings to partake in the all the bee-assisted delights. The meal concluded with a smoothie cocktail of honey, fruits and milk, downed with a spontaneously coined salutation to the bees—Gesummmtheit!
Photo: Tim Deussen
Photo: Tim Deussen
Photo: Tim Deussen
Photo: Tim Deussen
Plan Bienen in Liverpool
Plan Bienen recently travelled to Liverpool for the Libidinal Circuits: Scenes of Urban Innovation conference organised by the International Association for the Study of the Culture of Cities (Toronto) with the University of Liverpool and FACT, 8-10 July. Arriving via train, bus and ferry, Tessa delivered a paper on Day 3 titled ‘Plan Bienen: Trading Futures in the More-Than-Human City’.
During her stay Tessa was hosted in a local housing co-op by the very special Steph through BeWelcome.
‘Disappearing Bees’, un Magazine 9.1
Our article ‘Disappearing Bees’ was recently published in un Magazine 9.1. A PDF of the text is available here.
Berlin 2.0
Plan Bienen has arrived back in Berlin! We are here until the end of the month, enjoying some summertime in residence at ZK/U, in preparation for a presentation at Art Laboratory Berlin (Wedding), 26-28 June.
Plan Bienen: Statements of Profit and Loss will show documents and artefacts generated by the project, and opens open Friday evening 26 June, 6pm. It can be visited also on Saturday and Sunday from 2-6pm. On Sunday 28 June (12 – 2pm) there will be a brunch-seminar, ‘Rates of Exchange—A Discursive Sonntagsbrunch‘, a public conversation with invited guests about reciprocity and relations in the multispecies city. Brunch courtesy of the bees. Please RSVP to hallo@planbienen.net
Aesthetics After Finitude
Last week we had the opportunity to present a paper at the Aesthetics After Finitude symposium in Sydney. Our performative lecture, ‘Disappearing Bees’, developed ideas that were percolating during our residency at ZK/U, and perhaps points towards future directions of the Plan Bienen project. You can read a text version in the upcoming un Magazine 9.1, due for publication in June 2015.
A big thank you to the AAF research collective, who for the last year or so have been “discussing, experimenting and theorising at the frontiers of aesthetic theory. Taking the critical tradition of aesthetics to be no longer adequate to the possibilities of knowledge and experience of the twenty-first century, we have begun to develop an experimental practico-aesthetics that is less oriented towards the success or impact of work that defers to the judgement of a (human) receiver, than towards an aesthetics that is productive of realities, experience, and new declensions of ‘art’. This alternative is generational, not analytical; interventionist rather than evaluative.”
Gift from the Bees
Openhaus ZK/U Sumugan Sivanesan with Michael Schuster, 25 September 2014. Photo: Samuel Kalika
[Script for parting performance presented by Sumugan Sivanesan at ZK/U, 25 September 2014]
Hello and welcome to our Openhaus. All of us at ZK/U have been busily anticipating this evening’s schedule, and I would like to begin the tour by drawing your attention to those that might have been the busiest of us all, but have now retired for the evening—the Moabees. Over the summer there has been some buzz around die Bienen in the city and the extent to which Bienenvolke are appearing in each and every kiez. It seems that reports of scores of dead and disappearing bees over the last few years have revived our interest in these long-time cultural companions, calling attention to the ways in which we all profit from their presence.
The phrase ‘robbing the bees’ is often used to describe the task of collecting honey from beehives. Honey may well be sought after as a ‘nectar of the gods’, but is in the first instance food made by and for bees from the nectar they collect from flowers. Recently, Tessa and I were talking to a beekeeper who described the honey she had extracted as ‘a gift from the bees’. This Imkerin said that the bees permitted her to take their honey as long as she agreed to pass it on. She gives jars of honey to friends and relatives, and to tradespeople as a reward for a job well done. Such gifts spotlight the interplay of goodwill and obligations that bind us to one another and are in excess of more rational economic relations.
Humans have harvested honey and cultivated bees since the earliest recorded civilisations, however for many of today’s beekeepers honey is simply a ‘sweet bonus’, a byproduct of the crucial pollination services that these and other insects provide. In the current eco-cultural climate bees are often portrayed as a benevolent species—‘the good bee’ brings the world into abundance and maintains the conditions on this planet in which we thrive. If we believe that by improving the lives of bees we also improve our own, then what kind of lifeworlds would emerge if we pegged our progress to bees?
Berlin has a reputation as a bee capital. In the past, the city’s beekeepers lobbied for the planting of certain trees that would provide food for bees… their success can be read in street names such as Unter den Linden, Birkenstrasse and Kastanienallee. More recently installing hives atop significant buildings such as the Abgeordnetenhaus, the Berlin Opera and of course right here at ZK/U, not only locates bees in the heart of the city but brings them into our social consciousness. Today European beekeepers have been instrumental in having particular insecticides, known as neonicotinoids, banned in the EU, reducing the mortality rates of bees and wilfully keeping the prospect of a world without bees at bay… as one local beekeeper puts it, ‘intervening politically on behalf of the bees’.
Honeybees are social beings capable of collective decision-making and action. They are creatures of extraordinary strength and endurance that give their lives for the hive and are often used to symbolise patriotism and hard work. The sociability of bees has been read as a metaphor for both social collectivism and capitalist industrialism, as well as to argue for and against the value of individualism. Our fascination with bees has inspired the sciences, arts and philosophy, so might a bee-led social turn, in turn shape our wellbeing?
Whilst it is unlikely that if all the bees of the world suddenly died, we would soon follow, such a scenario would spell catastrophe for both our habitats and industries. Little is known about the effects of bees on the systems that support arable land, but we can be sure that yields of, say, almonds in California or coffee in Costa Rica would collapse overnight. As the once well-stocked shelves in our food halles and supermarkets began to empty out, would ideas that we associate with bees, such as social cohesion and cooperation, also disappear? As a consequence, imagine if organised and once industrious workers arose as a swarm of vengeful killers!
A principle of classical economics known as Jean-Baptist Say’s law states that ‘supply creates its own demand.’ According to this logic, supply precedes demand and seeds desire. Now into my last week at ZK/U, and with Tessa already back in Sydney, I find myself with an over supply of raw local honey—more than I could possibly consume before I too must leave. As a parting gesture and in the spirit of ebullience and abundance Tessa and I would like to pass this bounty on to you. Consider it a gift; from ourselves and the beekeepers, and by extension a gift from the bees.
[Cue music]
Video: Faraz Anoushahpour