DeepSummary
The podcast episode features a conversation with Rosamund Portis, an artist, writer, and researcher of environmental humanities. Rosamund shares her fascination with bees and her work exploring the social and cultural dimensions of bee population declines. She discusses how human practices and climate change have impacted bee cultures and dynamics, and the importance of storytelling and art in shaping our understanding and engagement with the more-than-human world.
Rosamund highlights the cultural significance of honeybees, particularly in Europe and the United States, and how they serve as a gateway to learning about other bee species and environmental issues. She explores the concept of 'bio-culturalism,' where biological processes and cultural values become entangled, shaping the capacity for species to thrive or decline. Rosamund also emphasizes the role of art in fostering emotional connections, agency, and hope in addressing ecological crises.
Throughout the conversation, Rosamund shares insights from her research and artistic projects, such as the work of Lily Hunter Green and Laura Ryder, who use creative practices to raise awareness about bee decline and inspire environmental consciousness. She encourages listeners to engage with the stories and experiences of other species, resist preemptive mourning, and recognize our collective responsibility in shaping a more sustainable and caring relationship with the natural world.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Bee population declines are a complex issue with no single cause, but rather a result of various factors, including habitat loss, pesticide use, climate change, and human practices.
- Storytelling and art play a crucial role in shaping our understanding and engagement with the more-than-human world, fostering emotional connections, agency, and hope in addressing ecological crises.
- The concept of 'bio-culturalism' recognizes the entanglement of biological processes and cultural values, shaping the capacity for species to thrive or decline.
- Honeybees hold a significant cultural significance, particularly in Europe and the United States, due to their unique relationship with humans and their ability to bridge domestication and wildness.
- Creative practices, such as those by artists like Lily Hunter Green and Laura Ryder, can raise awareness about bee decline and inspire environmental consciousness through embodied experiences.
- The idea of 'preemptive mourning' of bees, while technically inaccurate since they have not collectively gone extinct, can serve as a catalyst for taking action to protect them.
- Different perspectives and knowledge systems, such as those from natural beekeepers and entomologists, offer valuable insights into understanding and addressing bee population declines.
- Recognizing the peripheral stories and experiences of other bee species and pollinators, beyond just honeybees, is essential for a more comprehensive understanding and approach to addressing ecological crises.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “When I talk about extinction as a bio-cultural process, what I'm seeing or what I'm talking about is the fact that there's lots of different species who are alive and who are working within a cultural entanglement which is shaping their capacity to either thrive or perhaps become endangered and go into decline... I see art as giving people a way to engage with that grief, and to engage with that emotional connection with the subject, but also to engage with a sense of agency over it.“ by Rosamund Portis
- “The colony collapse disorder crisis sort of blew up, I should say, around 2006, so that mid two thousands, and I always like to say, and this is taken from the works that I read on this particular crisis. It started with the story of a man called David Hackenberg, who had that particularly troubling experience when he went to pay a visit to his hives one day. And essentially he found that they were completely empty. And he was in no way prepared for this because he recalled that when he last went to visit his hives that they were boiling over with bees.“ by Rosamund Portis
- “They're in that really interesting space where, because we've been able to have that interaction, that sort of sense of trying to domesticate with them, and because we have that quite commercial relationship with them through that production of honey and other substances, we are continuously entangled with them. And yet they retain that wildness.“ by Rosamund Portis
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Episode Information
Green Dreamer: Seeding change towards collective healing, sustainability, regeneration
Kamea Chayne
4/28/23
“When I talk about extinction as a bio-cultural process, what I’m seeing or what I’m talking about is the fact that there’s lots of different species who are alive and who are working within a cultural entanglement which is shaping their capacity to either thrive or perhaps become endangered and go into decline... I see art as giving people a way to engage with that grief, and to engage with that emotional connection with the subject, but also to engage with a sense of agency over it.”
In this episode, we welcome Rosamund Portus, an artist, writer and researcher of environmental humanities. Drawn to bees at an early age, by way of her exposure to gardening, Rosamund conducted her undergraduate dissertation on humans’ understanding of bee culture. She later pursued a Ph.D. in the social and cultural dimensions of bee population declines. In turn, Rosamund has gone on to complicate black and white “whodunit” narratives around species extinction, while advocating for creativity and art as pathways of relational becoming.
Speaking from her context of living in the U.K., and through a lens of “bio-culturalism,” Rosamund is interested in how modern, consumerist, human culture (at least in the West) have become entangled with a perception of bee culture, particularly the trope and role honeybees in agricultural systems. She invites us to challenge what renders a “meaningful” life and death, which species get to matter within mainstream extinction dialogues, and how storytelling plays an important role in enriching our capacities of engagement with bees, other species, and ourselves.
(The musical offering featured in this episode At the Edge of It by Oropendola. The episode-inspired artwork is by Cherie Kwok.)
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