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.
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
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.”
You are cordially invited to the Unofficial Opening of the Plan Bienen Mint.
After 3 months researching real and possible relationships between people, bees, honey and time in Berlin, our time is (almost) up. We have over the summer accumulated quite a number of very local honeys, and we would rather share them with you than try our luck with Australian customs.
See what trades have been taking place between beekeepers and honey-eaters, with a special private viewing of the commemorative Notgeld soon to be minted for each exchange.
For anyone in Berlin this weekend, tomorrow at ZK/U is the very first ‘Gütermarkt‘ – a different kind of local market.
We will be there all day with the Plan Bienen – ‘Honey Stock Exchange’. Bring something special, home-made or home-grown for your chance to take home honey produced by the bees right here at ZK/U. High-frequency trades welcome, all reasonable offers considered.
Gütermarkt
Sunday 7 September
12-7pm
ZK/U – Siemensstr 27, Berlin
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Tomorrow is Open Haus again at ZKU, from 18:30. Plan Bienen will be participating by offering a behind-the-scenes sunset soirée with beesting cocktails and irregular currencies. Bring something to exchange (conversations accepted).
The artists invite you to be part of an experimental exchange network in which self-produced honey is traded for various non-monetary things (time, skills, help etc.). Open to beekeepers and honey-eaters alike. No obligations!
You can also join by loaning a domestic object related to bees or honey – this could be anything…. All borrowed items will be displayed together in a window installation in Moabit, after which they will be returned to their homes.
For questions or more info , contact us at: planbienen@gmail.com / 015 252 806 821
Here at ZK/U we have our own little colony of bees to observe, maintained by the Moabienen Mitimkern, a team of busy young beekeepers who are bringing a number of beehives and bee-related activities to the neighbourhood of Moabit, one of Berlin’s oldest and sleepier parts. There are four hives perched on top of a container out the front, including the especially calm ‘Vanilla Ice’, and ‘Rosalee’, a consolatory gift from another beekeeper who stole one of the Moabienen’s colonies whilst it was swarming (an antiquated German law entitling whoever captures a swarm to keep it..).
Yesterday we joined Elisa and Katja as they checked up on the hives and prepared a new colony for Jana, who will install them in her local Friedhof. Though the decidedly unsummery weather meant we couldn’t harvest any honey, the bees seemed happy enough.
Last week we attended part of the 5th OuiShare Summit in Berlin, a congregation of collaborative economies enthusiasts and advocates. Amongst those presenting their own (very real) approaches to a post-monetary world in this most resourceful and ‘creative’ of European cities, we found Velogistics – a cargo bike share system or postfossilmobil where you can borrow a pedal-powered transportation vehicle from someone in your neighbourhood; Leila – a free shop and borrowing-centre for all sorts of useful objects here in Berlin; Lebensmittel Retten – a food waste rescue & distribution operation; and curiously, an open source beehive project.. Open Source Beehives – a collaborative initiative setting up standardised plywood beehives across different parts of the world, equipped with data sensors to monitor the health and behaviour of the bees they house, with a view towards helping scientists studying the various threats faced by today’s bee populations.
Max Planck Institute. Karl von Frisch and the honeybee dance language.
