MUST SEE: Allegorical art /Beehive Collective & Plan Colombia

[lostnfound]

I saw a Beehive Collective 'storytelling' of their drawing 'Plan Colombia' this week and I must say it was transforming. I can't recommend it ENOUGH.

The 'Beehive' name relates to a desire to cross-pollinate the various progressive movements. They use art and narration in an innovative way to convey an entire universe of complicated issues to ordinary people.

For those struggling with HOW TO GET THE FACTS OUT (i.e., slimming a firehose down to an absorbable trickle), their approach is worth checking out.

With ideas straight from Colombian activists and in collaboration with many, the Collective created a long, intricate "Plan Colombia" banner which they narrate. They spend about 90 minutes discussing it -- including liberal participation from the audience. (They also use a six-foot tall fabric storybook to enlarge the various scenes for discussion purposes.) I've copied a section of their banner and posted it here (nonprofit anticopyright use):


In their words, "the graphic attempts to expose the lie of the drug war as a smokescreen for multinational corporation’s interests in extraction of the rich biodiversity and natural resources of the Amazon." Their presentation is not angry; it's respectful, calm, and participatory (and free), and they "take turns narrating through the mural’s details and facts, helping to break down complex issues into smaller, more digestible chunks."

Near the top of the mural, wasps descend in the form of Blackhawk helicopters, Bronco fumigators, from the nest of America; and the role of consumers is shown by various "consumer-larvae". Each one -- such as the Texas larvae with gas station pumps for arms; another doing cocaine; the "Mall of the Americas" shopper -- becomes an opportunity to discuss the consequences of homogeneous excessive consumption.

Below the fumigators comes one of my favorite details: the trees being sprayed with herbicide are curved inward slightly, so as to give the impression of forming the ribs of a ribcage -- a reminder that the forests of Colombia are the "lungs" of the planet.

Below the trees, blood-sucking mosquitoes, some labelled with company names like "Oxy", "BP" "CocaCola", busily extract oil and water and other resources from the land.

A parallel world of hope is also shown -- leaf-cutter ants have cut away at the nightmare world to expose the parallel world with ants working on the empowerment of ordinary people through union organizing, others working in sustainable agriculture, and so forth.

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They have a website at www.beehivecollective.org, but it doesn't do them justice yet. Their website does show their schedule, though, and they appear to have January entirely open, for western states, and Northern California for the first week of February. So if you are in that region I would strongly recommend trying to set them up for your group or (liberal) events.

(And if you do follow up on that suggestion, I'd love to hear about it.)