decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) inspired by the idea of self-governance of non-human stakeholders

ongoing

Due to their complex social organization, bees have become curiously metonymous for social politics since antiquity. Aristotle describes these “state-forming” animals as political, because work is exclusively a collective project. The hive exists as one cybernetic body… The decimated biodiversity of bees however is a testimony of an accumulated human meltdown, throbbing within the cornucopia of depressed living environments, pesticidal infection, globalized parasites and superindustrialised agriculture.

Against this backdrop, the beeholder - beecoin project at the conjunction of artistic creation, urban activism, crypto-economic design and beekeeping, stands out in the field of blockchain-based practices. Operating as a Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAO), Beecoin is an art project dedicated to the improvement of the living conditions of bees. Following a first iteration developed in 2019 it represents a cutting-edge, locally grounded experiment participating in the recent emergence of a variety of artistic endeavors, pioneering alternative paths for the future development of decentralized applications (dapps) for common good.

Visitors can participate by becoming active members of the network, and as part of the project, more than 15 beekeepers from Kassel act as mediators. Members—bees as well as visitors—can decide upon proposals that promote non-human-agent well being. As with many other projects in the blockchain world, Beeholder - Beecoin is speculative at its core, projecting a radically disruptive future socio-technical development.