Inner West Council, Sydney, NSW, Australia
During the Edged Greenway 2021 residency Superorganism moved beyond the white cube gallery space and engaged in a range of site specific explorations guided by bee behaviour. New to the Greenway site, we established ourselves in a container, painted it gold and made it our hive or homing ground. Over the two weeks our world expanded and we created a repertoire of rituals and artefacts that signify a more than human experience that has continued to grow.
We took ourselves on floral derives guided by bees, followed the movement of the sun and tidal patterns of the waterway, chartered nectar sources, created a waggle dance, used computer algorithms to transmute the sonic signature of a beehive and began collecting wishes from the community who stopped to share stories of connection and love of nature.
Everyday we looked for bees drawing in nectar from the local flora, photographed them and created an instagram gallery of kaleidoscopic images – each showcasing a flower supporting a bee siting and a set of co-ordinates that inspired a waggle dance. At the conclusion of each week, we create immersive sound and light bath rituals with the community. These included collaborative humming circles, projections, candle lighting and waggle dances. These works and others laid a foundation for our ongoing collective and the first wish economy work exchange where we carried our wish stores and distributed them on the light rail next to the site.
Over the Water/ Songs we were sung to
And we looked to the water, the industrial canal that followed at the edge of our habitat. We passed along the water and we sang ourselves songs our grandparents had sung to us as children. Singing the water journeys undertaken by many migrants in this area, sensing environmental peripheries.
Tuning in Friday
Each Friday we made beeswax candles with passing strangers and at sunset we lit the candles with passersby, undertook a collective humming and tuned into the end of day and the phase of the sun.
SoundBox
Every Friday evening we held a sound and light format resonant event in the gold box. Videos below feature work generated by digital media artist Callum Denham for one of the Soundbox sessions.
Singing to Bridges
And we took to the kayaks, we undertook a bee-humm to the bridges over the canal, as they themselves resonated with traffic.
