Bee Stories is a multi-media installation combining video and audio in which the viewer has an experience of being immerse in a culture other than one’s own. The idea is to immerse the viewer in another culture that is tied together by images and stories of bees and bee lore. The images are also meant to transport the viewer to imagine other times –possibly times of utopia and peace from the ancient past or in the distant future—while they are listening to non-English languages. The video images are designed to create a meditative almost hypnotic effect.

The video footage is a visual narrative of bees, bee priestesses and bee lore presented as though one is looking through a kaleidoscope.  This is accompanied by stories about bees told in various languages.  The viewer is able to watch the video while listening to the stories in two ways: as a composite of sound played overall and on individual headsets in which the stories are being told one at a time. Translations of the stories are available as wall text. The video is a critical part of the piece in that it ties the stories together visually and acts as a grounding agent for the viewer and the installation. The sound track of the stories is designed to create a cacaphony of language. The stories are mingled so that at times you hear only one and at other times an ensemble of stories –a tower of Babel so to speak—mixed as a complete audio track that plays while you view the video.

When I was living in Brittany in the fall of 2003, I had the experience of being inside another culture that I could only interpret visually and intuitively since my French was so rudimentary. In Bee Stories I am re-creating the experience of being immersed in a culture and bathed by a language other than one’s own. The experience is meant to be slightly disorienting yet also transportive and reassuring so that one’s imagination can be engaged.  

If the viewer understands the language they are listening to, they will obviously make the translations as they listen, thus existing in a bi-language mode of thinking while they view the video. If they do not understand the language, which will be the case in most instances, they will have a sort of transported cultural experience without leaving a familiar space.  The “disorientation” caused by a “foreign ” language  forces one to create perceptions and draw conclusions that are sometime appropriate and correct and often total misreads. How one does this to enable their  own understanding of a situation or an event is of great interest to me. 

How we navigate our ever-complex world has multi-faceted meaning: we are a global community growing ever smaller necessitating that we understand each other culturally in ways that were never expected before; we are immersed in numerous expressions of language every day (technological, visual, aural, cultural), often navigating unconsciously and not always seamlessly through these terrains; our abilities to successfully communicate and collaborate across cultures will be one of our greatest achievements in the future. Bee Stories touches upon all of this. I believe that we can achieve this joyfully, playfully and with great love if we are given circumstances to experiment within that are non-threatening and supportive.  This piece creates an atmosphere of tranquility so that curiosity and intuition can flourish, and viewers can expand their imaginations while they begin to comprehend what lies ahead.