SWARM is an artist-researcher collective that is exploring, thinking, and making in relation to honey bee eco-cultures. We seek to develop the greenhouse artlab as an ongoing, site-specific, research-creation space that supports artistic production, queer imaginations, and discourse about art and eco-systems. The SWARM collective is Dallas Cant, Roewan Crowe, Kaliesa Delilah, Franchesca Hebert-Spence, Lorena Sekwan Fontaine, Hailey Primrose, Willow Rector, and Maram Rocha. SWARM is working to contextualize our explorations of queer and feminist ecological thought alongside and in relation to Indigenous knowledges about land and language on Treaty One Territory + homeland of the Métis Nation.

Scientists and scholars have yet to pinpoint the exact origin of the Anthropocene; yet, all agree it is defined by incontrovertible human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems (Waters et al. 2016). While pre­industrial agrarian practices affected land, wildlife, and natural resources, the rise of industrialism and mass mechanization exponentially amplified the impact of human behaviour on the environment. This period of “great acceleration” was underpinned by a fundamental shift in the relationships between humans, the earth, and the multitudinous species with which they had coexisted. The rise of industrialism created conditions in which doctrines like colonialism, misogyny, transactionalism, and individualism (re)gained currency. This ethos marked a profound rupture in ways of human thinking about self and relationships to the world, signalling an end to ethics of reciprocity and cooperation and the emergence of “survival of the fittest.”

By proposing, “Swarming the greenhouse artlab: Artistic Encounters with Bee Eco­Cultures in the Age of Chthulucene,” the artist-­researcher collective SWARM aims to infuse the wisdom of the pre­industrial past into artistic processes that might inform possibilities for other futures. We adopt Donna Haraway’s concept of Chthulucene, a process of reworlding and a way of “staying with the troubles” of the past, present and future, while valuing the necessary processes of kin­making and “becoming with” as descriptive of the imagined possibilities beyond the bounded epoch of the Anthropocene (Haraway 2016, 2,3). Just as ancient Greeks believed honey bees had the ability to travel between the Underworld and the living, we look to Apis mellifera as living compasses indicating ways to make meaning with devastating ecological realities.

SWARM contends that an important way to regain lost relationships and knowledge is to investigate and re­invigorate modes of human-­non-­human communication. We wish to resuscitate the traditional practice of “telling the bees” as both model and means of cross -species education about the profound impact of environmental crises on all life forms. We will engage with diverse publics to pursue four objectives: 1) develop the greenhouse artlab as a site for research­-creation; 2) animate the greenhouse artlab by engaging with queer and feminist ecological thought through exploration of bees and bee eco­culture; 3) contextualize our understandings of ecological knowledges alongside and in relation to Indigenous knowledges about land and language and work with the Cree concept of Kwayekatasowin –setting things right (Lorena Fontaine and community); 4) deepen engagements by initiating public talks and workshops, creating several SWARM artworks.

Building the cooperative, creative research model detailed above is timely and important. By replacing notions of radical individualism and human exceptionalism that have contributed to the ascendancy of the Anthropocene Era with notions of kinship and collectivity, we seek to create physical and imaginative space to repair relationships, replace dialects of dichotomy and division with languages of collectivity, and begin the process of setting things right. In a thriving beehive, there is no member who is not needed, no contribution that is undervalued or disregarded. As scientists have learned, genetically encoded altruism enables honey bees to enact one of the most poignant models of kinship in the natural world. By paralleling their collective process, by listening as well as talking to the bees, we will create new artworks that seek to communicate what we learn through our research-­creation processes.