Porcelain beehive, honeybee colony, sensors, archival cabinet, humidifier, cooling unit, Hans de Vries archive
Behind the glass pavillion of Zone2Source, a porcelain sculpture houses a living colony of honeybees. Inside the art space, a work by the Dutch artist Hans de Vries is conserved through a climate system within a sealed archival cabinet. Sensors in the beehive register its temperature and humidity, along with the electrostatic communication between the honeybees. These readings shift the light and atmosphere inside the cabinet. The decay and the legibility of the work are governed by the behaviour of the bees.
The architecture of the archive conserves an artefact by negating entropy. It suggests permanence through enclosure and refuses the objects their transformation. A bee colony conserves itself by opposite means. A worker bee lives a few weeks, but the colony persists across years while almost every cell within it dies and is replaced. Two forms of permanence are set against each other. One that denies loss, and one that lives by it.
The conserved work is a project by Hans de Vries, known as the archivist of the unnoticed unnoticeable. De Vries studied and recorded the processes of the natural world and was a close observer of the relationship between people and their environment. This project is one such study: a document of the minute examination of his five beehives between 1970 and 1971.
Throughout the exhibition, the work stands as an unfolding process. A reciprocal relation of care: the beehive takes care of the archive, the archive informs the public about the bees, and people take care of the beehive. A score played out by the colony, the archive, the ecology of Amstelpark, and the beekeepers who mediate among them.
Technical Support Joost Plattel & Jelle Reith
Production Assistance Ada Harpole
Buildup Assistance Imko Verhoef
Woodworking Mette Veldhuis
Beekeeping expert Thomas Freitag
Beekeepers Paula Bergasa Suso, Veronika Puškašová, Vanessa Krystek, Jessica Aliaga
The beehive was constructed with the kind support of the advisors and fellow residents at Europees Keramisch Werkcentrum (EKWC). Special thanks to Huub and Lenneke Veldhuis for their assistance with the ceramics.
The Hans de Vries archive is presented courtesy of the Agnes & Frits Becht Collection. Special thanks to Brendan Becht.
Telling the Bees is generously funded by AFK, Mondriaan Fund, Stichting Stokroos, and het Cultuurfonds
