Mehiläisten seura

Instructions and few moves for bee rave

Stand up from where you are sitting at and move to a better and more open place with bee walk. (beewalk.mp4)

If you’re not alone, show them the bee dance . If you are, show it to yourself. You can use a mirror if you want.(beedance.mp4)

Put on some danceable music. If you don’t know any of it. Here is a song we danced to on Friday 23rd of July in Mynämäki.

You are in the hive now.

It’s dark and hot. Hot and dark. Try saying that out loud as you walk around the space.

Say HOT when you throw your hands out forward and DARK when you throw them up in the air. Marlon shows you how. Do it with him and do it with the music. (hotndark.mp4)

It is very crowded and smelly. Everyone is minding everyones business. It is summer, sun is shining and you are about to go out and forage.

You are at the landing board showing your stinger to the sun. Whoa! What a big and poisonous stinger.

Do the honey slap! Bend your knees and treat yourself with a good series of slaps to the softest place of your bum. 1 2 3 4 5 6 at least. (honey slap.mp4)

You fly from flower to flower. Nectar is sweet and there is plenty of it now.

Winter in the hive (an adaptation of the dance we did in Saari residence as I remember it)

Winter in the hive requires more dancers, at least four. Select who will become the queen and put on more danceable music that should last at least 6 minutes. This for example.

Queen: “Do you want to do the winter?”

Cluster: “Yeah!”

Queen: “Come to the cluster now.”

Queen: “Let’s huddle!”

Dancing people form a tight group around the queen and start to huddle.

Queen: “It is so hot and sweaty here in the middle.”

huddling and dancing

Queen: “Hey guys, this is how it’s gonna be like for the next three months.”

huddling and dancing

Queen: “Can I touch you a bit? Can I use you a little? There is nothing to do but huddle here.”

Touching and huddling

Queen: “Hey guys, this is how it’s gonna be like for the next two months.”

Queen: “Round and round we go in circles.”

Dancers move places around the queen.

Queen: “Hey guys, this is how it’s gonna be like for the last one month.”

Queen: “I start laying eggs here in the middle. I lay eggs now. You being to feed me.”

Queen is kneeling in the middle of the cluster.

Queen: “It is spring. It is +7 out in the shadow. You go out to release yourself. It feels so good to go out at last. “

buzzing and huddling and dancing more loosely.

Queen: “We survived the winter. Many died but we survived.”

These videos were recorded by Ina with her phone on 31st of Jyly 2021 close to a neolithic dwelling site. Bee dancer: Marlon Moilanen.

Risk Assessment

I travelled from the UK to Finland during the pandemic. At the time of travel UK residents were required to have special exceptions in order to enter Finland. I negotiated, with the assistance of The Bee Company and Kone Foundation, to be offered special cultural representative status in order to work for two weeks at the Saari Manor.

Whilst in the UK, I was required to complete a risk assessment matrix that would identify the level of risk that a trip for a residency with The Bee Company would incur. It is these bureaucratic measures of risk that have left many nations and people across the world in desperate, difficult circumstances during the past year and a half. How should we quantify and qualify risk during a global pandemic and how do we quantify and qualify reward? Are risk and reward antonyms? Is it a roll of the dice, or it is something that can be managed, quantified and revised? Hyper managed? How do honeybees manage themselves? Is there a leader? A consensus? A biological imperative? A monarchy?

What does it mean for me to be considered a cultural representative for the UK and Finland at a time like this? How vital is my work at a time like this? What contribution to the cultural economy of both Finland and the UK would my presence at the Saari Manor for two weeks offer? Should I be taking this business-like approach to an artistic collective? Why are we called a company? Are we a performing arts company? A capitalist enterprise? A group of people in good company. A secret society of apoidea worshippers? Perhaps we are all of these things and none of these things. Would two weeks in the spacious nature and generous facilities of the Saari Manor help define this further? Why is this report open with so many questions? Why don’t I have any answers?

RATING	CONSEQUENCE		LIKELIHOOD
5	MAJOR	Death, Major damage to buildings	VERY LIKELY	Almost certain to happen, is happening now
4	HIGH	Cause permanent disability	HIGH	It has happened in the past year
3	MEDIUM	Temporary disability, eg fractures	MEDIUM	It has happened or is likely to happen within 2 years
2	LOW	Significant injuries, bruising, sprains	LOW	Is unlikely to happen in next 2 years
1	MINOR	Minor injuries, cuts, scratches	IMPROBABLE	Very unlikely to happen

Uncalculating Risk

What about other types of risk? What about emotional risks? What about the value in taking a risk?

This is where I feel like the Saari residency with The Bee Company is excelling. It is an exercise in risk taking. We take risks together through exercises in trust, through the practice of going slow, through learning with and for each other, through trying new things, or opening ourselves up to one another and becoming vulnerable in order to explore a practice or a method or methodology that interests us. We take risks through sharing this experience together, and through not trying to force the issue.

This is the theory anyway. The Bee Company always aimed to only ever be somewhere else to where it started by the end of the residency. The Bee Company always stated that The Bee Company wasn’t about making artwork about bees. And yet, we ended at the same place we started, the Saari Manor. We discussed honeybees extensively, developed movements for a potential future performance, made recordings inside beehives and generally thought of ourselves in relation to bees, and other critters that our spirits aligned with.

What is there to come from exploring a group residency where there was no major agenda other than to get to know one another and one another’s practices, approaches and inspiration in their individual work? We drafted dream scenarios of what happens after the residency. Could we commit a mid-term future together exploring the lifeworlds discussed and investigated during the residency?

But what did you actually do there?

We arrived and agreed a shopping and food protocol. We made indicative recipes and a rota for evening meals. Our daytime meals would be individually managed, but there would always be a breakfast option if desired. Food was and is a critical force for The Bee Company. We agreed a schedule drafted by Ina for workshop activities. We each ran a workshop which introduced the other members to an element of each individual’s practice or ‘where they were at right now’. We navigated the Saari manor in an interdisciplinary and multi-sensory mode. Smell, Sight, Sound, Taste, Proprioception, Dreams, Fantasies, Mapping, Mapping Mapping and more Mapping. We formed an alliance of mapmakers, mapping the landscape, the schedule, the connections between one another and other critters, and our psyche, ecology, environment… an economy of noise. I hugged a granite boulder. Performed haptic cartography on Marlon’s body. Sensed the flow of honey through my body. Found a smell and tried to contain it in a box. Created a backstory for a spooky building in the woods. Melted my bones. Listened deeply. Howled at the moon. Explored dreams and imagined sanctuaries. Walked at night. Listened to an all-male choir. Danced at a honeybee rave. Uncovered new knowledge about a local archaeological site of importance. Waxed a honey bee hive box and weaved a skep. Cooked. Washed the dishes. Washed myself. Copious saunas. Kept returning to the bees. What of the bees?

My hope is that we can reconvene in spring 2022 where our lifeworlds will come together once more, this time in Tullisaari Park, in Helsinki. Home to The Bee Company’s honeybees and gardens. We will perhaps stage a performance that reflects on the risks taken, in the organising, and organisation of The Bee Company. Perhaps we will have honey. Perhaps there will be dance, music, vegetables, flowers and sound installations. Perhaps there will be film. The world still feels very open.

Something I have learned from attending residencies is that it is rare that any idea or work matures during a residency itself. It may be months later that the ideas coagulate and form into something exciting… the hallowed ground of the ‘output’. It might take even longer with The Bee Company. This is fine. This is how The Bee Company wants to be. Aspiring to perform, always performing, taking risks, flirting with the system, or finding ways to play a different hand altogether.

Amongst this group is realism. Nobody wants to work for free. Nobody wants to be taken advantage of. Nobody wants to quit The Bee Company. Within our ranks, a passionate beekeeper and skilled lighting designer. One of the most exciting Finnish dancers of their generation. A performer, choreographer and archaeologist of incredible depth, sensitivity and imagination. A set and costume designer with a deep knowledge of sustainable materials. A fine artist with gardening and flowering as a critical practice. A sound artist who wishes to listen and encourage others to do the same. An interdisciplinary company of makers, doers and thinkers.

The Bee Company.

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Black pepper, tofu and broccoli stir fry recipe for 5 people:

• 3tbsp black pepper crushed
• 3tsbp white sugar
• Ginger finely chopped
• 3 garlic
• 5 spring onion
• 1 white onion diced
• 6tbsp butter
• Cornflower
• 6tbsp soy sauce dark
• 6tbsp soy sauce light
• 350g tofu
• 1 large broccoli
• 1 red chilli
• Rice (steamed)

Slice tofu into cubes. Dust with cornflower. Fry in vegetable oil. Remove from pain and drain. 5tbsp of butter, onion, garlic, ginger in large pan. Fry until soft. Add pepper and sugar. Add soy sauce. Add broccoli. Add chili and spring onion. Add tofu. Add 1tbsp butter. Serve with rice. 

Mehiläisten Seura / The Bee Company

Written by Suvi Tuominen, artist, curator, archaeologist, choreographer, dance per-former

31.7.2021

This report looks into the question of organising and organisation in The Bee Company. It is written with contradictory feelings, that at the moment unfold into two directions. On the one hand, the residency period has been wonderful, soft, energising and full of rest. On the other hand, the residency period has been consuming, energy sucking, laborious, full of internal conflicts and hesitations. 

I am artistically interested in the emergent relationships between various artistic methods, theoretical readings and structures of production. Therefore, for me these contradictions are somewhat essential in the analysis and reflections regarding artistic work. So, instead of looking away from the contradictions I want to write about them. After all collective art making is all about these relationships and negotiations happening in between contradicting emotions. We are in this way more human-like than bee-like. 

The Bee Company conceptualised their research trajectory for the Saari residence with the following words ‘’…our goal is to end up in a different place from which we started off…’’ 

A two week intensive artistic work together is inevitably doing so. There were few pre-conditioned strategies that were used as organisational tools for the company in order to achieve this research trajectory.

1. a time table draft. 

2. assigned times for each artist to host a workshop. 

3. assigned times for collective work. 

4. assigned times for leisure activities.

These modes of communicating organisational activities for The Bee Company failed drastically throughout the two weeks. Note, that the concept of failure is not used in a negative sense, but rather as something that is the reason for the unexpected to emerge. To fail with schedule drafts is quite common in porous artistic collectives, and also, I would claim, in process-oriented artistic activities. 

For The Bee Company the failure happened sometimes because of weather, sometimes because of unstoppable improvised lectures, sometimes because it was not clear what is leisure and what is work, sometimes because a taxi never arrived, sometimes because we simply forgot to ‘’speak about it’’ collectively, sometimes because we were ‘’speaking about it’’ too much collectively.  

It was clear for everyone in the Bee Company that due to our theoretical framings and references it would be somewhat contradictory even to follow a rigid schedule. The condition of failing in front of too restrictive organisational tools was set collectively. Or rather, in the collective consciousness. But to be quite honest, for me such decision requires more work, labor and space for exchange were the ‘’it’’ is continuously deconstructed. So to be honest, working collectively is a total post-structuralist mess. 

But wait let me hold my horses now!

Deconstructing in this case does not mean that in the collective we try to get rid of our collective history. But rather, the conditions where we fail either as a collective or as individuals need to be deconstructed in order to make that history of failing matter. This is to me politically transformative and therefore, The Bee Company seems to be making politically progressive art, looking straight into the questions of collectivisation. 

Emergent

Question: What does company mean for us? 

Question: What are the hidden power relations and hierarchies in the company?  

Question: How does bees fail in schedule drafts and what are the consequences of it? 

Question: What is the queens role in the Bee Company and in the Hive? 

Question: How much space do queens take in the Bee Company and in the hives? 

Question: How do we hold space for failure, vulnerabilities and accommodate different needs?

Question: How do we do this without talking?

What is especially interesting for me to work in this company is that we are not trying to solve these matters in one night. Speaking, talking and reflecting the modes in which all forms of organising, whether it be physical intimacies, discussions or collective decisions, happen is extremely important when making (for me) interesting art.

Visual artist and researcher Karolina Kucia has focused a lot on organisational roles and made also special notions around different modes of organising in the arts. Her work is a great inspiration for me and and I could sense how her insights would also assist The Bee Company forward with these organisational abstractions that do eventually also condition the very materiality of our future works. 

Next we need to discuss further Spirit animals in The Bee Company, Gossips, Private conversations within collective work situations, toxins and parasites. 

But that will be another longer blog post!