Words of Bees

Noko Giri II Gallery (Hiramatsu Woolen Factory), Ichinomiya, Japan 20.08–31.10.2024
Michał Smandek, Olga Smandek

The artistic residency and exhibition “Words of Bees” took place in the city of Ichinomiya in the Aichi Prefecture in Japan in the gallery space of Noko Giri II. This space is located in a former fabric factory with a hundred-year tradition (Hiramatsu Woolen Factory), and the history of the prefecture itself has been associated with the textile industry for over three hundred years. The context of the place was extremely important to us, because the residency was based on the implementation of beeswax textiles using a technology invented by us. “Words of Bees” was created in cooperation with the local community of Ichinomiya and was based on collective work. The multi-element spatial installation is a collection of several dozen semi-transparent, hanging textiles made by workshop participants. Moving between them, they were set in motion, which increased the spread of the scent of beeswax. Small holes in the luminous yellow material of the textiles created a structure resembling a code. We can call it a hypothetical transcription of bee language in the form of a script unknown to us. And following this path, the entire installation is a Library or Archive of knowledge that we cannot read. We know similar forms of transcription in their structure from Braille, Morse, from the perforated memory cards of the first computers or from the jacquard weaving looms, whose matrices we could see in the Hiramatsu factory. Due to the participatory nature of the project, authorship was distributed among many units, modeled on the work of bees in a hive. The essence of the event was a meeting and cooperation, which we understand as a starting point for creating new models of thinking about the future, the uncertainty of which we sense (and are already experiencing) in the face of climate change.

The project was supported by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute from the program “Polish Culture in the World” and the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Katowice. The Polish Institute in Tokyo joined in the promotion of the event.
Organization: Pola Hiramatsu, Hisanori Hiramatsu, Yukiko Hiramatsu, Yoshi Hiramatsu.