HIVE residency – June 2023

The HIVE residency, which ran from 12 to 17 June 2023 at far°, provided an opportunity to invite artists and practitioners who are interested in the connections between the performing arts and the environment and question their relationship with nature, with a particular focus on permaculture.

Participants

Maria Da Silva (playwright and director), Marion Baeriswyl (dancer and choreographer) & David Castro Pita (composer and performer), Shannon Cooney (choreographer), Laura Gaillard (dancer and choreographer), Lea Samira Bernath (dancer), Christoph Leuenberger (choreographer and performer), Eileen Wiley (art therapist and beekeeper), Anne-Laure Franchette (multimedia artist and curator), Amaranta Fontcuberta (PhD in evolutionary ecology and scientific and cultural mediator) and the far° team.

Inspired by the hive

The HIVE residency was motivated by Shannon Cooney’s work on co-creative relationships with nature and inspired by the work of bees. The beehive is a novel example of a super-organism that raises the question of coexistence and prosperity as a whole, while at the same time giving value to the individual, to his or her autonomy and specific skills. Outside the hive, the bee, alone, forages and feeds on the nectar of the flowers, collects pollen, which is essential for collective creation, from the construction of the combs to the production of honey and the protection of the brood.

These complex interrelationships between flora and fauna are models of reciprocity and ‘shared’ evolution at the heart of nature: flowers offer pollen to bees, while the bees disseminate it to give rise to new buds. The resulting fruiting bodies in turn provide food for insects, birds, animals and humans. In this way, the seeds travel, take root and propagate in an exquisite symbiosis of collective creation.
This approach invites us to consider how we can rethink our own artistic practices by taking inspiration from these models, and how this can encourage evolving processes of exchange and collaboration.

A month before the start of the residency, participants were asked to share a resource or reference document that interested them personally. This free-flowing exchange of material prior to the meeting created the basis for the discussions. The intention was to spark further discussions, both personal and collective, to deepen our research and resources, to be prepared in advance for informed conversation and exploration, to broaden our individual fields of practice and to expand our libraries.

Canadian-born, Shannon Cooney  is a dancer, choreographer, performer, presenter and dance teacher. She has been co-producing and presenting choreography in Canada, Europe and the UK since 1993. Shannon has lived in Berlin since 2006 and is dedicated to researching and developing her teaching practice, fusing dance and cranio-sacral principles, under the name Dynamic Expansion, Moveable Cinema. This teaching practice is the ‘garden’ of her choreographic projects, recent works including the performance Fluid Resilience (2020), presented at the far° festival des arts vivants in 2022. She teaches locally and internationally for dance centres, companies and universities.