Studies of bee life in the natural sciences have emphasized the entanglement of hive and honeybee, with the social life of bees (elaborate communication, egalitarian labor, collective interdependence, and altruism) evolving in tandem with the hive. The hive in turn becomes an infrastructure and body; an organism and repertory; a thing to be defended, reproduced, and preserved; an activity and space; and an ongoing, collective, highly aesthetic collaboration. This event assembles performance artists and scholars, anthropologists, and beekeepers to imagine the hive or nest. In considering hives by bees and others, we are driven by a beyond-human interest in what social homes teach us about the intersections of performance studies, animal studies, anthropology, and life sciences. Together, we’ll explore how social forms of life and their infrastructures exceed and instruct the political, examining how this could expand a conventional performance studies understanding of ethics and aesthetics, reproduction, collectivity, assembly, domestic space, and organizing. They ask that guests and participants feel free to bring food and drink to the studio for a collective potluck.
New York City, NY; NYC