BeeHive Collective Plan Colombia Tour
Friday Jan. 31 at 7pm
This last minute event promises to be really entertaining and informative. Check out the following webpage which has their amazing images and more information. See you here!
www.beehivecollective.org See the Flyer HERE
The BEEHIVE’S narrative presentations of our anti-copyright graphics campaigns
against war, colonialism, and globalization are on collaboration tour once
again!
Wait!? …You aren’t familiar with the posters? You can view them and
read their written narratives at www.beehivecollective.org
We’re looking for locations in California, Mexico, and Central America to
share our innovative popular education presentation that blends visual,
interactive, and narrative elements. Our illustration-based communication
strategy is punctuated with opportunities for audience participation. It’s to
be understood by anyone, not just the experts and political analysts!
Simultaneously, we will be conducting interviews with folks organizing
against "Plan Puebla Panama," a series of industrialization projects that
affect the entire region of Mesoamerica. The plan threatens to displace
hundreds of indigenous communities and destroy precious rainforest and wetland
ecosystems. This graphics collaboration will be the final image in our trilogy
of posters focused on globalization in the Western Hemisphere.
..............................................
A n n o u n c i n g …
The Beehive Design Collective’s cross-pollination tour to help build
grassroots resistance to Plan Colombia...
and the start of the collaboration process of our next graphic, focused on
Plan Puebla Panama!
As the Empire continues to speed forth with it’s push of war for resources
throughout the world, the time to draw connections is urgent. Our swarm of
grassroots pollinators is commencing its Spring migration in California this
January and February, visiting schools and organizations, with storytelling
presentations of our educational political graphics about yet another war for
oil, Plan Colombia. We will continue in Mexico and Central America until early
April.
We’re interested in collaborating with local groups that are focused on anti-
war and international solidarity work, teachers interested in digestible
discussions that utilize cartoons as well as facts, and student groups looking
for inspired information …
Our featured presentation, offered in both Spanish or English, is about the
connections between colonization, militarization, and resource extraction in
the Andean Region of South America. This portable-mural “tour” is comprised of
a 16 foot high banner version of the Plan Colombia poster that displays the
issues in context of the “bigger picture.” The banner is simultaneously
accompanied by a six-foot tall fabric storybook, or projected “slide show”
that has sixty enlargements of scenes from the poster. Three presenters take
turns narrating through the mural’s details and facts, helping to break down
complex issues into smaller, more digestible chunks. All the while,
continually explaining how they are connected to the "bigger picture.”
Us bees consider it vital to subvert the talking-head-at-the-podium approach
to political discussion. We break down the model of the "expert" and
the "audience" by relating information across language and learning
boundaries. It’s a wicked healthy way to interact about MORE bad news…
Our graphics about the Free Trade Area of the Americas will also be in tow, in
case your group would like both presentations. We enjoy giving both as a way
to help viewers understand how these two timely issues are intertwined…
HELP BRING THE BEES TO YOUR TOWN! PLEASE HELP PASS THE WORD!
We have no set speaker fees, and are happy to do shows for free in community
oriented spaces. (we L O V E high schools!) But, yes, the hive needs honey…
and we’d really love help in our fundraising efforts. For universities, we’re
encouraging student groups to take up this opportunity for unique
collaborations amidst art, environmental, Latin American, peace and anti-“war
on drugs” groups… Funds from the California tour will be used to support free
presentations in Mexico and Central America, and the production of our next
poster, scheduled to hatch this coming April.
Please get in touch soon, so that we may collaborate!
thanks!
las abejas de la colmena colectivo
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Interested, but need more background? Here’s more…
The Beehive’s Plan Colombia poster and presentation is the product of many
discussions around the issue of colonialism in the Andean Region of South
America that took place between our collective and organizers over the spring
of 2002 in Ecuador, Colombia and the U.S. These exchanges of information and
inspiration were collaboratively sewn together into a quilt of images, and
organized in a circuit of progressions and contrasts that inform and engage
the viewer throughout their journey of this elaborate graphic. This circuit,
with its pathways geared towards fostering a narrative discussion, aids in the
functionality of the graphic to be used as a political organizing tool… a
powerful tool in which to discuss an overwhelmingly complex situation in a
format that breaks the information down into more digestible, and therefore
memorable, chunks. This communication strategy allows for addressing specific
elements of the issue, still in context of the larger forces at hand, while
transcending the boundaries of language and learning.
The long history of colonialism in the Americas, currently manifested in the
Andean Region as “Plan Colombia,” is a strong metaphor of the multi-faceted
destructive influences of U.S. foreign policy and corporate monoculture on a
global scale. This 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 and her peoples. It is
an anti-war poster that speaks in the mythology of our times, the cancerous
mono myth of corporate globalization, and its antibodies of grassroots
resistance. In the attempt to overcome the tendency of political imagery to
simply portray “what we are against” and horror stories, this overwhelming
situation is illustrated in three “layers” to help the viewer experience the
different aspects of an extremely complex, and brutal situation. The image’s
mission is to portray the story of not just the nightmare, but to give weight
to the inspiring stories of hope, courage, and struggle of the people and
critters that are living through it.
As North American youth that have endured the destructive and racist
brainwashing of television, video games, cultural appropriation and
advertising imagery, our collective felt it was essential to produce this
representation directly in collaboration with organizers in the Andean Region,
to get the story straight…. The result as you will see, is thick with many
voices.
The tools produced from these collaborations are being distributed, as anti-
copyright material, for use in campaigns in both the South and North of the
Americas. The Beehive's campaigns need your help with contacts and research to
make these anti-copyright images informed, effective, and well-distributed.
thank you!
