LITTLE THINGS RULE THE WORLD: THE ENLIVENING PRACTICES OF APICULTURE AND HAND-MADE FILMMAKING

This project recognises parallels between crafts of beekeeping and a specific branch of analogue animated filmmaking, in which organic matter is applied directly to the filmstrip, in two key regards: both are enacted in material environments involving more-than-human bodies and both are under threat of extinction or obsolescence. Though numbers of bees are declining a counter momentum of independent apiarists promote sustainable practices. Likewise, the digital and economic threat to analogue filmmaking has spawned the rise of artist run film collectives.

Through animation as research methodology this project aims to raise awareness of the significance of apiculture to wellbeing. In so doing the medium of experimental animation through which the value of apiculture is disseminated is also proposed as generating an experience of living well. By literally re-animating and enlarging matter to show forces and details of living matter that ordinarily remain unseen, animated film has the facility to reveal more than human perspectives, to stimulate a sense of wonderment with the world and to thus enhance our experience of living well within it.

Uniting researchers across disciplines of science and the humanities, along with independent apiarists, the project explores the qualities of artisanship in these different fields and asks two key questions: how, by taking custodianship of their crafts, can practitioners keep their specialist skills and languages in circulation, and how can bee intelligence (and language systems) participate in shaping experimental animation.