Digital Video, 2019, 4:53 minutes
Sibling Ascension 2: Xylocopa is a video of a common carpenter bee having an ecstatic, otherwordly experience. Religious ecstasies and encounters with extraterrestrial intelligences share descriptions of periods of being out of one's body, lost time, and intense lights. In this video, that is happening to a bee. Xylocopa is a common, even pest-like (to humans) life-form. It can also be understood as an extraterrestrial intelligence making contact with the bee. My goal by showing it to have an otherworldly experience is to insist on a sense of wonder and strangeness of the other intelligences surrounding us. By recognizing the agency of the bee, we can begin to imagine acting in kinship with other species to create an inclusive environment.
The video is made with animated digital paintings, collaged images from macroscopic photographs, and motion-graphics techniques. The sound is made with a modular synthesizer, an interdependent, networked system.
