bee writings
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bee writings
Index
Swarming Memories — Martina Millà Bees in Barcelona — Xavier Theros Honey Bees, Strangers in Art and Our Companions on Earth: A Brief and Personal Overview — Domenic Leo Urban Bees and Natural Cities — Jordi Bosch, Jaume Cambra and Anna Febrero Glossary
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We live in a time when there is a widening recognition of the way in which all areas of human activity – art, science, social, political and economic structures – are related and mutually dependent on each other. How are we to make sense of this? Art, and artists, offer some of the most effective and at the same time intriguing ways of analysing and asking questions about our world and its bewildering complexity. Here, in Beehave, we bring together new installations and works by twenty-four artists, both in the Fundació Joan Miró and across the city of Barcelona. They celebrate the actual, undeniable yet threatened role of bees in maintaining biodiversity, their physical contribution to our world, in nature and culture, but also their symbolic place. The history of the relationship humans have built with bees is long and has a profound impact on so many aspects of our lives. Records of beekeeping go back to ancient Egypt and the Greeks, and it represents an integral part of Mediterranean and European traditions. In fact, the distribution of honey bees across the planet mirrors our own, and our fate, so they say, depends on theirs. We can see so many aspects of what makes us human reflected in the bee: social organization, division of labour, communication and language, competition, industry. The bee has been used as a symbol of government and human social organization in traditional Indian thought, in everyone from Aristotle to Napoleon Bonaparte to Karl Marx, or in La Colmena, Camilo José Cela’s allegory of Spanish society ravaged by the Civil War. 4
Now, with the threat posed by colony collapse disorder affecting bees all over the world, we are shifting rapidly from taking their presence and their phenomenal contribution for granted towards a more advocacy-driven critical re-evaluation of our relationship with them. This is notable not least in the form of urban beekeeping, a recently revived practice that brings apiculture right into the heart of modern cities. In this new exhibition exploring the intersection of art, ecology and apiculture, the Fundaci贸 Joan Mir贸 continues its tradition of exhibitions that place art at the centre of contemporary debate and invites the public to participate in reflection and dialogue on urgent topics whose relevance to our lives is beyond question. Lastly, I would like to express my thanks to the Banc Sabadell Foundation for its support and its complete confidence in this project. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona (ICUB), without whose collaboration this project would not have been possible. Their firm support has allowed Beehave to transcend the format of a gallery-based exhibition and take on an urban dimension.
Marko Daniel Director, Fundaci贸 Joan Mir贸
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Martina MillĂ
Swarming Memories
I’m writing this introduction at a very tense and intense moment, when it seems as though the lines of a new consciousness are being defined. A summit on climate change has just been held in Bonn (Germany); 15,000 scientists have warned us about the irreversible effects of a change that can no longer be denied; I recently read an article about the drastic reduction of biodiversity; right now there’s an exhibition at the CCCB about the end of the world which was preceded by another show, smaller in scale but no less poignant, at Can Felipa, curated by Christian Alonso. The two are more or less connected to the figure of Timothy Morton, one of the promoters of the notion of the Anthropocene. There is also a film showing in theatres right now that reactivates the iconic Blade Runner 6
introducing a more contemporary sensibility, with a scene in which honey bees appear in a world where precisely this last stage of the destructive path of humankind in its postmodern Westernized version has reached its highest expression. While all of this is happening, there is tension in our city, Barcelona, between an inherited model known for heavy traffic, an excess of asphalt and very dense land occupancy and a new model that strives to change this legacy in the midst of unprecedented real estate speculation. A debate has opened up about improving air quality for people at the same time that awareness is increasing about the fact that certain animal species prefer to live in urban or peri-urban areas for lack of more benevolent ecosystems. In addition, in the midst of it all, we are getting alarming news about the drop in insects (75% less, according to a recent report) while also hearing about the importance of pollination, the dreadful and lethal impact of certain herbicides and insecticides, and about certain agricultural practices involving single crops – sometimes genetically modified – that are practiced with the approval of national governments and supranational political organizations. In short, these are times of great informational and discursive pressure, almost impossible to ignore and to process, and ultimately these are subjects that a considerable number of artists have been integrating into their respective practices as a focus of research and protest. But this project – titled Beehave by Luis Bisbe, one of the participating artists – was born much earlier, at the beginning of 2016. Beehave began to take shape 7
around an unexpected memory. It was a memory that took me to a home in the Guinardó neighbourhood some time in the late sixties that I had tucked away completely. On the roof terrace of that small storey house on Carrer de Juliol, a dead-end street that no longer exists, on one side there was the chassis of a Goggomobil, one of those microcars that had been popular in the fifties. On the other side, not far from that skeletal frame that looked like an abandoned toy awaiting a new life, were a couple of empty beehives, in a faded shade of grey, also no longer in use. This memory must have come back to me when I was thinking of the growing practice of urban beekeeping in large Western cities such as Paris, Berlin, London or New York – a practice that seems to have been reactivated in parallel to the rising awareness that honey bees, those extraordinary pollinators, as scarcely known as they are feared, are suffering a severe survival crisis. All these elements started running through my head more and more insistently, and I made a few attempts at giving them a narrative or a structure of sorts. This state of latency lasted several weeks while the idea of linking artistic efforts with the current situation of honey bees gradually became clearer and more precisely defined. That was when I found out that one couldn’t practise urban beekeeping in Barcelona because at some point it had been banned. Do you remember how the old vaqueries disappeared, those dairy stores inside the city with their own cows at the rear? Or when the slaughterhouse next to the Arenes bullring closed down? Well, beehives were 8
also officially cast out of the city when they were classified as animal husbandry businesses in the 1970s. I tried to follow the thread of that childhood memory and managed to contact Frantxi, one of the sons from the family that had lived in the house on Carrer de Juliol. It turned out that his father, Salvadoro – that was the fond nickname we gave him because of his unyielding faith in Esperanto – had worked as a beekeeper in Barcelona and even appeared as such in the Yellow Pages for several years. Frantxi told me a few anecdotes, all of them fascinating, and promised to track down one of his father’s hives. He also showed me a book about beekeeping that he had rescued from his father’s library: La abeja productiva, by Mario Robles, published in 1960, which by 1966 was already in its fifth edition. The terrace at Carrer de Juliol, 7
All of this led to an increasing desire to find out more about the current situation of honey bees and consider these questions hand in hand with artists in the city of Barcelona. Right away, I was struck with an 9
idea: to create a circuit of art interventions spanning the entire city and for which we have been able to rely on the collaboration and support of the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona. Therefore, Beehave was born from this urge to address such a timely subject beyond the walls of the museum, using the open, visionary language of artists. Accordingly, Beehave comprises ten urban actions that are complemented by an immersive, transformative exhibition held at the Fundació Joan Miró. This publication accompanies the show, but it is only the first part of a broader publishing project, just as the exhibition is only the first chapter of Beehave, which will unfold all around Barcelona in March and in the autumn will continue in Swiss lands with adapted contents. This volume is a compilation of the essays concerning the project. It is a collection of texts that we have commissioned with the aim of charting a theoretical framework for the exhibition. To understand the city of Barcelona’s relationship to beekeeping and honey bees, we asked Xavier Theros to contribute an essay on the history of apiculture in our surroundings. To have a current scientific perspective on the practice of beekeeping, we requested a text written by six hands from three professors specializing in three aspects that are indispensable for understanding the world of honey bees: apiculture, botany and entomology. Lastly, to trace the presence of honey bees in important works of art over the course of time, we sought an art historian trained at one of the most prestigious institutions for this field, which, like so many others, 10
has had to adapt to the unstoppable changes of the past few decades. History of art is an almost artisanal discipline, like beekeeping, requiring dedication in body and soul, much like scientific research. It is obvious that all exhibition projects require strong personal engagement from the entire staff involved, but I don’t remember ever having embarked on a project of such a large scale, with so many repercussions and such a strong emotional charge (all of a sudden, Sara Ahmed comes to mind, with her theory of affects, so well received in our context), and the fact is that I had never activated as powerful a network of people as the one that has emerged around this project about honey bees. Like swarms, those superorganisms made up of thousands of bees working on a communal mission, Beehave has generated a considerable group of kindred spirits – people who are interested in the world of bees and have gradually come on board to join and enrich the project. Aside from the main participating artists, all of them extraordinary creative forces, I have contacted and met beekeepers, biologists, historians, botanists, archivists, technicians and senior officials in the Barcelona City Council, directors of other museums and scientific institutions, curators, herbalists, chandlers, architects, gardeners, writers, therapists, computers, florists, engineers, editors and probably a few more I fail to recall – not to mention a few worker bees, queens and drones that we have found, observed and admired along the way. The webs we have woven and the bridges we have built have been some of the most rewarding and profound aspects of 11
the project. It has been an exceptional pollinating experience and I would like to thank and mention all the people who I can manage to remember. First of all, our outgoing director Rosa Maria Malet, with whom I have developed projects over the past ten years, and all my other colleagues at the Fundació Joan Miró who have helped to build the vibrant hive in which Beehave has grown. Next, the authors of the essays in this volume (Jaume Cambra, Anna Febrero, Jordi Bosch, Xavier Theros and Domenic Leo) and, especially, Óscar Abril Ascaso, Diana Escobar and Eva Carbó, Manel Torrent, Joan Vallbona, Marga Parés, Roger Gasull, Fran López, Teresa Garnatje, Anna Omedes, Xavi Moreta and also Ines Goldbach. But I also want to mention extraordinary and idealistic beings such as Father Valentí from Manresa, Samuel Ramal, Santi Soto, Xavi Martín Llavaneras, Frantxi Miserachs, Alexandra Olivella, Vicky Benítez, Antoni Muntadas, the organizers of the BCN Honey Fest and Chiara Ianeselli. In any case, since the list is incomplete and will keep on growing, it will continue in the second volume. Last of all, I would like to dedicate this project to all the people who love bees and insects and who struggle to re-establish the appropriate conditions for these extraordinary creatures to be able to have a healthy life on this marvellous, ravaged planet of ours. They are people who know more than anyone else that we humans need insects more than they need us. I also want to extend this dedication to Salvadoro Miserachs Solà, the Esperantist beekeeper, and to the people of his generation, that of my grand12
parents, who experienced the collective trauma of the Spanish Civil War and the resulting exile, but who were also able to do things that the current forest of regulations and controls no longer allows us to do, like keeping hives on our rooftops. Barcelona, November 2017
Honeycombs among an assortment of objects at Joan Miró’s studio in Mont-roig
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