The Beehive Collective
The Beehive Design Collective is out to cross-pollinate the grassroots!
Through collaborations with communities on the frontlines of globalization at home and abroad, the workerbees create collaborative, hand-illustrated posters of dizzying intricacy that result in patchwork "quilts" of personal narratives shared with them on their travels. Their anti-copyright graphics, which take years to produce, result in tools for broad popular analysis, education and organizing in an art-based, interactive format for anyone to use. Numbering in the tens of thousands, the Bees' poster prints have made their way to walls of rural community centers, high schools, galleries, labor offices, art spaces, dorm rooms, and countless other places to live as cultural and organizing tools.
With banner reproductions of staggering size, the Bees use storytelling to take audiences on an exploration of their work to draw connections between colonial history and present day struggles against corporate globalization, violence, and racism. Their "picture lecture" presentations and workshops offer an accessible and interactive visual alternative for unpacking how resource extraction, militarization and industrial development are all part of the "big picture" of corporate globalization.
THE CURRENT CAMPAIGNS / TALKS AVAILABLE FOR 2010
(NEW FOR 2010) True Cost of Coal
Long exploited as a resourcce-extraction colony within the US, the Appalachian Mountains are home to a fight for survival whose outcome will determine in part the industrial power of this country. Without coal, there would be no 'cheap' electricity. Today's energy corporations and government bodies are continuing to show the extent of their violence and greed as they push their extractive agendas in the "New Coal Rush."
Our insatiable demand for cheap power has lead to the most extreme, devastating form of coal mining yet, Mountaintop Removal (MTR). The TRUE COST OF COAL graphic uses MTR in Appalachia as a lens through which to understand the historical and contemporary story of ENERGY, RESOURCE EXTRACTION and of AMERICAN EMPIRE accelerating throughout the world. The Bees expose the DECEPTIONS of CLEAN COAL technologies and bring to light the ensuing CLIMATE CHAOS facing the world today.
With a gigantic portable mural-in-process teeming with intricate images of plants and animals from the most bio-diverse temperate forest on the planet, the Bees share (and seek) stories of how coal mining and Mountaintop Removal affect communities and ecosystems throughout Appalachia and beyond. This graphic also looks to the future, raising questions about resistance, regeneration, and remediation while celebrating stories of struggle from mountain communities. The TRUE COST OF COAL will challenge all of us who casually flip on a light switch to examine our own connections to MTR- and to think about what we can do to stop it from within our own communities.
Dismantling Monoculture (also available in Spanish)
You may already be familiar with the first two works in the trilogy about globalization in the Americas, the FREE TRADE AREA OF THE AMERICAS and PLAN COLOMBIA campaigns.
Dismantling Monoculture weaves together images from the Beehive Collective's Graphic Trilogy focused on corporate globalization in the Americas. With giant portable murals the Bees take audiences on an interactive VISUAL tour of the connections between COLONIZATION, MILITARIZATION, and RESOURCE EXTRACTION disguised as "industrial development."
For the past several years, Bees have been touring the Americas and Europe with these two graphics in tandem. With two giant illustrated portable murals, a six foot tall fabric storybook, and an engaging narrative, the Bees have awed and inspired audiences across the hemispheres.
The 2009 version will also include previews of scenes from MESOAMERICA RESISTE, the final epic chapter in the trilogy, our most ambitious and elaborate illustration to date...5 YEARS in the making and nearly hatched!
Mesoamerica Resiste
This graphic, currently under construction, is the third and final in the Beehive's trilogy on globalization in the Americas. The intricate map of images is focused on Mexico and Central America as a means of telling a larger story about, COLONIZATION, GLOBAL ECONOMY and MEGA-INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT projects.
Like it's global counterparts, Project Mesoamerica (formerly "Plan Puebla Panama") aims to colonize and transform the land from Mexico to Colombia in the interest of building infrastructure to facilitate resource extraction and "efficient" global trade routes...just as early European monarchies set out to do 500 years ago.
The title 'Mesoamerica Resiste' reflects The Bees' efforts to document, illustrate, and share stories of grassroots movements working to oppose top-down development through horizontal community based organizing, as well as to honor the incredible Mesoamerican biodiversity threatened by this plan.
Featuring over 300 distinct species of plants and animals, Mesoamerica Resiste! is by far and away their most ambitious and elaborate illustration to date.
With the final stages of inking and printing yet-to-be completed, the Mesoamerica Resiste! graphic is on the road as a 'picture-lecture' or 'workshop' using bite-size pieces of the immensely detailed graphic narrative in a slideshow format.
What People Are Saying
“At large and small convergences of people throughout the Americas in recent years, the Beehive Collective has provided the visuals for the movement, giving it an artistic context and artistic voice. As a musician performing at large and small convergences around North America myself, there is no group of people that I run into quite as often as the Beehive folks. And as much as I run into folks from the collective, I run into their artwork a thousand times as often. I often ask people about the posters in their house, curious how much the people know about their origins. Usually people don’t know who drew those pictures, though they’ve spent hours staring at them and soaking in every exquisite detail. But whether people know it, like Peter Schuman or Eric Drooker, the Beehive Collective is everywhere.” —David Rovics, political folk singer, Jamaica Plain, MA
“Having written, directed, and acted in educational political performance art for seven years, I have never seen such an appealing graphic art presented with such integrity and diligence and respect for audience. I also have produced news and public affairs radio for twelve years. I’ve told Boston’s radio listeners about the Beehive Collective’s gorgeous, intricate and diligent work. Their graphic medium conveys complex connections among social issues like a symphony of ideas. I can not convey the same amount as appealingly with words on the airwaves. The Beehive Collective is creating an educational revolution in both art and classroom instruction.” —John Grebe, WGBH radio, Boston, MA
“The work of the Beehive Collective goes far beyond the traditional understanding of Solidarity. It is actively fostering equal exchanges and relationship building between communities that are involved in the same struggle for justice and democracy throughout the Western Hemisphere. Their open and inclusive process and the incorporation of Latin American mythology into their work transcends borders and language barriers. The Beehive collective breaks away from traditional forms of education. Their art forces the viewer to interact and participate within the graphic, making it a vital popular education tool where people learn about the reality of Plan Colombia, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, etc. The Beehive collective are pioneers and their work is telling and effective.” —Hendrik Voss, SOA Watch Networking Coordinator, Washington D.C.
“That presentation made me pay attention and learn more useful information per square minute than any lecture ever could. There’s something about illustrations that teaches more than words, spoken or written. Especially in history teaching, when most everything is factual, and the only thing that changes is the lens that you see it through. It was refreshingly the only lens that I haven’t seen the situation through yet. This is the point of view that people need to know, that comes straight from the Colombian people, not just defiant hippies bravely defending civilians they’ve never met.” —Margaret Siple, 17, student at Garfield High School, Seattle, WA
“Even with a large crowd, the atmosphere that the Hive created at their presentation at Connecticut College was such that students felt comfortable asking questions as they occurred to them. The story-book is a brilliant prop that captured and maintained the full attention of everyone involved. In my opinion, the most important aspect of the presentation is that the incredibly complex and intimidating issues surrounding Plan Colombia are broken down into a format that is understood and absorbed even by folks who have no prior knowledge of the situation. The story and its presentation were honest and down to earth. This is key; students here are quickly turned off to preachy, condescending, and excessively-long presentations.” —Adam Weinberg, student organizer at Connecticut College
