The Bee Agency Project
by AnneMarie Maes

This event is part of:

Together with Musica - Impulscentrum voor Muziek, Meakusma presents "The Bee Agency Project" at IKOB.

AnneMarie Maes aims with the "Bee Agency Project" to give back autonomy to the Apis mellifera (Western honey bee) and support colonies to live in the wild again. Domesticated by beekeepers for a long time, their apiaries became honey factories. AnneMarie Maes wants to counteract this. "The Bee Agency Project" plays an exemplary role in the public perception of biodiversity and sustainability. The project combines art, design and science. Bees, humans, microorganisms and plants work together to ensure a solid foundation for the further development of our ecosystem.

The project rests on two pillars: there is a mobile "guerrilla beehive", built from biomaterial and equipped with sensors that observe and analyze the beehive's interior and environment. And there is also the video Variation Games (21'59 "), a condensed compilation of a year-long audiovisual observation of the behavior of a colony of honey bees in the hive.

The intelligent guerrilla beehive project received an honorary award in the "Hybrid Art" category at Ars Electronica.

AnneMarie Maes founded the Brussels Urban Bee Laboratory in 2009. It's a space where a group of artists, scientists and technologists can observe bee colonies without interfering with their lives. The aim is also to raise public awareness through art installations, lectures and workshops.

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