The two-year investigation aims to achieve a higher sensibility towards socio-political conditions, interpersonal and intrapersonal connections, and the act of becoming fearless while remaining soft and permeable. The work is a container, encyclopedia, or archive for the excavation of ancient therapies, the queering of contemporary ones, a re-appropriating, a remixing, and a reformulating of therapies in order to care, to share, to disconnect. This expansive investigation includes intimate artist-to-artist overnight sessions in the Botanic Garden VU Amsterdam, a Useless Artist Disease , meditations for Wolfgang Schäuble, the master key to De Appel Arts Centre, a hacked heart-break, and a personal narrative about a journey into the world of healing.
Vera Hofmann
www.verahofmann.de
info@verahofmann.de aaronmclaughlin.vodka
#observation
2014-10-18 The Bee
Stepping up on the roof I saw a bee in a little puddle, struggling to get out. I was about to get a piece of something to help her out but I saw she could move herself. Crawling towards the water's edge onto the sun lit warm surface, bitumen of the roof. First with her feelers, she pulled the water off her front. She can bend the feeler around her body. She used her forelegs like a dog cleaning his face. Then with her back legs she wiped off the water from her body. Her tail wiggling and moving like a caterpillar. This went on for some time, she was constantly wiping her body and tail. The left wing up in the air, the right wing still glued to her body from the water. Wet wing. With her wiping from front to back she always glued it together even more. I watched her for something that felt like 10 minutes. She was wiping and wiping and sometimes wiggling her tail. And she was even expanding the tail so that the stripes got a little bit bigger. I looked at her beautiful body, soft hair on it. Six feet that looked like little branches from a tree. Black head. Black eyes on top of the head that looked like a helmet coming straight from the future. Was it a bee? I thought they have this huge eyes...I have to Google it. Her feelers were black, the right one in a slight curve, the other one also curved but with a little kink. She started to move, to walk, as if that would help. I asked myself if she is consciously feeling what is going on, probably not. I was looking with a curiosity, but was willing to help if she wouldn’t make it herself. That felt strange. To be so present to try to help a bee to dry her wing or at least get if off her body so that it can dry. She was still wiping her body. Then I thought she made it, her wing lifted a bit from the body but she wiped it again against her body. She put her right back leg under her body, maybe to wipe off water there, I couldn’t see it. I decided not to think, not to judge, just to observe. Not to help, just watch and wait what happens. She was still wiping, and moving her tail in round, in up and down, in stretching movements. Wiping. Sometimes she was wiping her left side of the body, too. Her left wing was up in a 45 degree angle, small, folded maybe, as a little 1/3 of a piece of cake kind of size. Looked dry. She started to move, to walk away. I have been bending over her on my knees all the time to watch her. Now I shortly make a wall with my hands that she couldn’t walk away in that one direction where I cannot observe her. She realized the obstacle and made a turn. I made a shadow on the bitumen. She tried to get into the sunlight. She did not make that one movement from behind to front what I thought would have separated her wing from her body. Maybe she does not know or is not able to make this movement. Ok, I don’t want to think, just observe. I feel happy to observe this beautiful animal. How much effort it takes just because she got into a little area of water. But she was not in a hurry I guess. She started to wipe her legs against each other again. Both front legs. I forgot what she did with the middle legs. Then the back legs against each other. Like a cricket, but slowly. Time passed, the sun did its job in drying her a little bit. She wiped her right part of the body again. And again. And again. The wing lifted up from her body. She wiped it back on it again. She wiped again and wiggled. Some part of the wing lifted up a bit. She tried by wiggling to get it off. Then she wiped it on again. Then it lifted up again. It lifted up to its original 45 degree position so that finally for the first time she wiped and did not reach her wing but just her body. She wiped off the water from her body. Maybe 5-10 times. A little drop of water got formed, the size of a pinhead and loosened itself off the end of her body, from and with her sharply pointed tail she put it to the ground, on the bitumen. It didn't fell off her tail. It was like honey that you have to gently put on the ground and then slowly let go. The drop of water becomes this thick, rich, fat thing. It sat on the bitumen next to the bee, sparkling in the sunlight. The wing seemed to have dried. She walked around a bit, still wiping with every part. Then she sat still and pumped. Her body pumped, like if she was exhausted and would have to breathe deeply like a bird after it hit something and lies on the ground. But I guess it is something else, not her breathing. She wiggled her tail again. Then she suddenly turned around, I don't know which direction she had in her system. She straighened her forelegs and the middle ones and looked like a gorilla ready to fight, or an upside dog, if that position exists in yoga. Then she started flapping her wings. Only the left wing moves. The wing still looked folded and I thought it can maybe unfold when she starts to fly. But it didn't. She put it down again. She tried to move once more, but still only the left one moves. She turned around, walking a little bit. Tried again. Then both wings worked, the right one also vibrating. She put them down again. Walked a little bit, then moving them again, vibrating, still closed. Suddenly she put in the next gear, her wings vibrated faster. I couldn't see if they unfolded or not as the vibration was too fast for my eyes. But the span seemed to become bigger. She lifted up and flew off on a wavy path.
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