Search for a command to run...
These photographs document the performance of <i>The Bees</i> across four sites, focusing on the role of the two performers. I also include one video to illustrate the unpredictable nature of working outdoors in borrowed spaces. At RHS Bridgewater in 2022, the garden’s own bee colony swarmed and, because the resident beekeeper was away, I was asked, as the only trained beekeeper available, to collect the swarm. This real action blurred into the performative elements of the installation for both the audience and myself.Shortly after creating the installation, I began beekeeping myself, in a somewhat unusual example of life following art, and became involved with Bees for Development, an international charity working to alleviate poverty through beekeeping. Through these connections, I learnt a great deal about bees and, via Bees for Development, had access to some of the UK’s leading authorities on apiculture. This knowledge fed into the performance at both a physical and attitudinal level. Observing a beekeeper at work reveals certain common qualities: calm, controlled movements; deep, sometimes trance-like focus; and a practised, almost stylised manipulation of hive parts and beekeeping tools. These qualities have been absorbed into the performance in order to create an atmosphere of otherness, which often contrasts with the environments in which the work is presented.In an improvised performance which, in essence, reacts to the audience rather than initiating action, the embodied knowledge of the performer, developed through long hours of interaction, becomes central to the presentation. Over the years, more than ten different performers have played the role, each bringing their own style. They are introduced to the performance by observing experienced performers and are given a small number of key performance anchors:Do less.Never admit the bees are not real. That is the game we are playing.Move slowly, ‘play’ the costume, and make the installation space contrast with what is outside.Never explain, never apologise. This is the informal company motto.Assist people in discovering the hives for themselves, rather than defining how they should experience them.Ask questions rather than give answers.The iterative nature of this research has been central to the development of the performance. Over many years, we have fine-tuned the work to respond to the variety of audience responses and the practical requirements of managing the wide range of spaces we are invited to animate. Over more than a decade, it has been performed in modern city centres, run-down shopping centres, on a flyover, in city and rural parks, in greenfield festivals, at stately homes, at village fetes, in art galleries, in community centres and in theatres. We have performed in nine countries to multilingual audiences that have ranged from all adults to all children and everything in between.The costume is an example of the density and intricacy of the performative response to the research questions. The overall palette, which extends to the hives themselves, of white and copper unifies the installation’s image in often visually complex environments, and the beekeeping hat serves to clarify the concept of what we represent. The coats we wear, which are the main element of the costume, have a more stylised design. In initial conversations with the costume designer, I discussed two inspirations. The first was a monk’s habit, because the early history of beekeeping in the UK is monastic and tied to the production of beeswax candles for churches and of mead fermented from honey. The second was the long black coats from the film <i>The Matrix</i> (Wachowski and Wachowski, 1999), because of the idea of multiple realities. On showing a sketch to the costume maker, he responded, “Ah, I already have the pattern for that. It’s a cassock.”The pseudo-religious ritual of the performance fits well with this image. In early iterations, audiences were offered a form of ‘mock communion’ consisting of a host with a drop of honey as an initiation into the installation. Practical considerations eventually intervened, however, as honey proved simply too sticky and difficult to manage in a public setting.To request accessible descriptions of the images or a transcript of the video, please contact the Research Data Manager (rdm@edgehill.ac.uk).