"MesoAmerica Resiste"

Beehive Collective
New York, April 27, 2006

The Beehive Collective is coming to the New School to present their new
graphic on Plan Puebla Panama. Please come and see!

Thurs, April 27th, 6–9pm

65 Fifth Ave, Room 201

New School

A swarm is coming! The Beehive Design Collective — a non-profit,
volunteer driven, political arts organization based in eastern Maine — is
headed this way. The group's mission is to "cross pollinate the
grassroots" through the creation of images as an effective medium for
deconstructing and educating the public about complex geopolitical issues.

Most interesting is their methodology. The bees create collaborative,
hand-illustrated posters of dizzying intricacy which are patchwork
"quilts" of personal stories related to them in their travels. Before
setting pen to paper, the hive does extensive touring and field
research. Interviewing community members about the effects of
globalization on their situation is a crucial component of the
collective's investigative process.

"We feel it's extremely important
to gather our information from as close to the source as possible," an
anonymous worker bee says. The imagery comprising the visual metaphors
of the posters, featuring characters exclusively from the animal and
plant world, are requests or edits from collaborators in Latin America.

Their trilogy is an engaging venture through a larger than life versions
of the Collective's graphics using banners that dwarf the presenters and
a six foot tall fabric flip-book. In a format they've dubbed "picture
lecture," the bees take participants through their own story before the
plunge into their graphic trilogy: the Free Trade Area of the Americas,
Plan Colombia, and nigh-complete Mesoamerica Resiste works are presented
in sequence. Interwoven throughout are anecdotes and statistics that
perforate dubious "drug war" rhetoric and expose the connections between
militarism and resource extraction in the Western Hemisphere. The
Beehive Collective heavily encourages audience participation, "We feel
people are visual learners, and that interaction is a learning
device. You can only absorb so much from the standardized, one-way,
'talking head at the podium' setup."

In their presentation, "Mesoamerica Resiste," their final and most
intricate and comprehensive graphic in the trilogy is unveiled as a
nearly complete work of incomparable detail. The graphic unfurls a host
of stories of resistance to the panoramic Central American megaproject
known as Plan Puebla Panama. The piece is previewed with a thorough
account of its creation and the bees' tactics and is slated for final
release in Fall of 2006.

The Collective bristles with activity; working on numerous fronts to
tackle issues as diverse as biotechnology, the prison system, corporate
globalization, the replacement of agriculture with agribusiness,
infrastructure megadevelopment, and the umbrella of colonialism. Their
current focal project is the completion of a graphic trilogy depicting
the effects of and resistance to globalization within the western
hemisphere. Their body of work is distributed as "anti-copyright"
cultural tools: individuals and organizations are encouraged to
reproduce their graphics for non-profit use as a means of circulating
information and awareness.

The all-volunteer Beehive Collective is currently on tour through the
United States to raise funds for the printing and distribution of their
trilogy finale graphic.

For more information visit here.

Contact:

Beehive Design Collective

3 Elm Street

Machias, ME 04654

phone: 207-669-4117

email: pollinators@beehivecollective.org