Plan Bienen
A project by
Tessa Zettel and Sumugan Sivanesan
Plan Bienen is an ongoing research project developed by Sydney-based artists Tessa Zettel and Sumugan Sivanesan during their residency at ZK/U – Centre for Art and Urbanistics in Berlin in 2014.
With Plan Bienen the artists attempt to make real and speculative connections between two parallel crises – one within European economic systems and the other in honeybee ecologies. Considering Berlin’s development as a multicultural ‘creative’ capital, the artists take the local histories and current popularity of urban beekeeping as an entry point to explore expanded possibilities for non-monetary economies and new social habits already present within Berlin’s food systems, intercultural gardens, migrant networks and ‘hausprojekts’. In the process they ask what kinds of promising ‘more-than-human’ futures might today’s city bees lead us towards.
‘Plan Bienen: Statements of Profit and Loss,’ will be open Friday evening, as well as Saturday and Sunday from 2-6PM, and will show documents and artefacts generated by the project. On Sunday 28 June there will also be a brunch and conversation, ‘Rates of Exchange—A Discursive Sonntagsbrunch’, discussing exchange and relations in the multispecies city, from 12-2PM.
Tessa Zettel is an interdisciplinary artist who works to create possible futures from forgotten pasts. Her participatory, site-based projects often involve forms of exchange and new relationships with obscured cultural practices and knowledge.
As an ‘anti-disciplinary’ artist, Sumugan Sivanesan works with a multiplicity of media. His installations, performances, videos and texts present a space for discussion and intervention.
