For this residency Tessa Zettel and Sumugan Sivanesan are returning to work further on their collaborative research project Plan Bienen, begun at ZK/U in 2014. Plan Bienen makes real and speculative connections between two parallel crises – one within European economic systems and the other in honeybee ecologies. Against the backdrop of Berlin’s post-reunification development as a multicultural ‘creative’ capital, the artists have taken local histories and the current popularity of urban beekeeping as an entry point to explore expanded possibilities for non-monetary economies and new social habits already present within Berlin’s food systems, intercultural gardens, migrant networks and hausprojekts. In the process they ask what kinds of promising ‘more-than-human’ futures might today’s city bees lead us towards?
Plan Bienen events 26-28 June at Art Laboratory Berlin:
http://www.artlaboratory-berlin.org/html/de-presse-aktuell.htm
This project is supported by the Australian Artists' Grant. The Australian Artists’ Grant is a NAVA initiative, made possible through the generous sponsorship of Mrs Janet Holmes à Court and the support of the Visual Arts Board, Australia Council for the Arts.