Beehave was an exhibition project curated by Martina Millà at the Joan Miró Foundation, that took place between the 16 of February and the 21 of May 2018. As part of this show, the sound piece alterbees was presented.
alterbees is a register of human encounters recorded at the frequency of bees. Using an apidictor – an obsolete device used to diagnose the state of a beehive through its acoustic frequency -, various human meetings and demonstrations were registered and subsequently recorded in phonograph cylinders made from beeswax.
The piece is activated with its use; and with this use, the object is eroded until the sound disintegrates.
Beehave was a collective exhibition that draws on the debate around the mass disappearance of honey bees, which in recent years has elicited a growing interest in urban beekeeping as a way to re-naturalise cities. The show brought together a number of contemporary local and international artists: Joan Bennàssar, Luis Bisbe, alfonso borragán, Joana Cera, Gemma Draper, GOIG (Pol Esteve & Miquel Mariné) & Max Celar, Vadim de Grainville & Marcos Lutyens, Jerónimo Hagerman, Marine Hugonnier, Anne Marie Maes, Melliferopolis (Ulla Taipale & Christina Stadlbauer), Joan Miró, Anna Moreno, Àlex Muñoz & Xavi Manzanares, Luis Fernando Ramírez Celis, Toni Serra (Abu Ali), Ulla Taipale, Andrés Vial, Pep Vidal and Philip Wiegard.