I went to a really fascinating presentation last Friday by the Beehive Design Collective. I was a little wary at first that it would be an all white, Latin American studies crowd, especially since in the ten minutes preceding the presentation I had to listen to some teenage self-described anarchists debate for ten minutes over whether police are just workers following orders, or if force against them is justified because they are the enforcement arm of the fascist state. I’m sorry: you do not qualify as an anarchist if you’re enrolled in a four-year liberal arts college. Luckily, the words ‘proletariat’ or ‘bourgeoisie’ did not make an appearance, otherwise I would have had to leave. But I digress.
The Beehive describes their ‘visual lectures’ as giant comic book posters, but that doesn’t do them justice. Imagine the picture left blown up to about 6 feet wide by probably 25 feet tall, spanning 500 years, and you’ve got a rough idea. The symbolism and detail in their work reminded me of what stained glass windows must have represented in medieval churches. They were storytelling maps, which for someone majoring in advanced storytelling, was reaaaally cool.
The Beehive members giving the presentation (yes, they were all Caucasian) impressed me with their dedication to getting the facts right and not speaking for the people whose story their work portrays. They acknowledged that their job is to educate Americans about the effects our economic and international policies have on Latin America, not save Latin Americans. Besides emphasizing the environmental impact of these issues, this is the other reason why they use insects, not humans, as characters in their stories. Plus, it makes for some kickass visual metaphors.
The content in the pictures comes from traveling to Latin American and getting stories directly to people in Latin America. Scarily enough, this is why one scene in Plan Colombia shows military contractors attacking a village using chain saws, instead of the machine guns they had originally envisioned. The same collective attitude they brought to their work came through in their presentation. They had a very Socratic method style of asking the audience what they thought various pictures meant before telling us what was behind the symbolism. I also really appreciated that as much reverence as they (and I) have for old forms of knowledge, they also realize the possibilities of technology for networking and global activism.
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