Relational hives: artistic practices of interconnection between bees and humans

Bees are among the most affected insects by changing environmental conditions, acting like sentinels capable of immediately intercepting pollutants that infect our ecosystem. Their bio- indicator function is directly detrimental to them: climate change can lead to the sudden depopulation of entire colonies, causing significant damage to the natural balance. Recently, we have witnessed the decline of many communities of Apis melifera, due to the altered conditions of our environment and the abuse of pesticides in agriculture. Preserving and fostering the relationship between bees and the ecosystem is therefore a matter of urgency. Moreover, bees build spontaneous communities in nature - being so-called superorganisms - and extremely sophisticated architectural structures. For all these reasons, they have been an enormous stimulus for cultural production. Even in the world of contemporary art, in fact, the particular conformation of bees has provided numerous points of reflection, ranging from consideration about the climate crisis to the fascination with their ethological peculiarities. Within this intervention, I therefore propose to structure an itinerary based on works of art that employ the collaboration of living bees, in order to establish creative spaces of interrelation. The examples examined come from different geographical locations, including Latin America, Europe, Oceania and artists such as Henrik Håkansson, Mark Thompson and Luis Fernando Benedit. The peculiarity of all the artworks presented is that they directly relate the space constructed by human beings with the space delimited by the insects themselves. Therefore, this provide an opportunity to configure a privileged exchange, that combines the aesthetic element with the possibility of rethinking our position in relation to these insects and, more generally, the nexus between human beings, interspecies spaces, science and nature.