Beeing, Beecoming

Beeing, Beecoming is a research-based interdisciplinary project exploring interspecies relations, with a focus on pollinating insects. Created by insect-oriented algorithmic design, 3D printing with clay, and growing mycelium from natural materials, an insect habitat was installed in an urban location in Graz. The sculpture is suitable for nesting of different species of wild bees and other insects — a living structure that undergoes changes under the influence of insects, fungi, animals, humidity, rainfall, and sunlight, gradually eroding and decomposing.

The site is not only a location but an important element of the artistic process. It is a network of ecosystemic multispecies interconnections in which points of intersection emerge between the human and more-than-human actors. A programme of events and workshops is composed around the habitat, including sensory walks, concerts, performances, and talks.

Visitors are invited to observe the process and relate to the environment in an imaginative-sensory way through minimalistic scores available at the site. The scores offer exercises in embodied cognition, proposing individual performances that attempt to shift attention, perception, and imagination away from anthropocentric day-to-day patterns.

The project creates a safe space for pollinators and, at the same time, a safe space for humans — a scientific and emotional stage for exploring interspecies relations and facing the environmental processes that affect them: how we think about the growing dependence of humans, and therefore our survival, on pollinators which are dying out.