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Philadelphia Launch Party: The Revolt of the Bees
Aaron Levy, Thaddeus Squire
Friday, October 14, 2005
Big Jar Books (55 N 2nd St, Philadelphia / 215-574-1650)
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Please join us in celebrating the Philadelphia release of "The Revolt of the Bees" on Friday October 14, 2005, from 7:00-10:00pm. Please note that this festive event will take place at Big Jar Books in the Old City section of Philadelphia (55 North 2nd Street | Info: 215-574-1650) and not at Slought Foundation. Free beer will be provided courtesy of Yards Brewing Company, live music by Jack Rose on acoustic guitar, and bee-related b-movies will be projected, including Queen Bee (1955), The Swarm (1978), and Candyman (1992). Editors Aaron Levy and Thaddeus Squire will be in attendance.
This new publication, the second in our Theory Series, engages metaphors of the hive in contemporary cultural life and encompasses an interdisciplinary approach that spans contemporary art, curatorial studies, and literary criticism. This publication is edited by Aaron Levy and Thaddeus Squire, with essays by Anthony Grafton and Thomas Keenan and visual contributions by Michael Zansky. The publication also includes a complimentary companion DVD, "in which the thinking man finds himself in a gigantic orphanage...," directed by Aaron Levy, with a monologue adapted from Thomas Bernhard's Gargoyles and read by Gary Indiana, which explores the archive in disarray. Information on the complimentary DVD included with this publication is also available online: http://slought.org/toc/publications/films/orphanage/
Purchase this book online!
The following movies will be projected during the launch party:
The Swarm (1978). Killer bees from South America have been breeding with the gentler bees of more northern climes, slowly extending their territory northward decade after decade. Entomologist Brad Crane (Michael Caine) has discovered that something is making them come together in huge, killer swarms. He wants to keep the General Slater (Richard Widmark) from using military tactics from further upsetting the balance of nature as they join to try to stop the swarms from approaching Houston. Directed by Irwin Allen.
Queen Bee (1955). Academy Award-winner Joan Crawford is at her devious best in this classic and campy 1950's melodrama. She portrays Eva Phillips, a hard-as-nails Southern matriarch uses her imperious nature to control the lives of all who live in her mansion with tragic results. This includes her husband Avery (Barry Phillips), a wealthy mill owner driven to drink by her insidious ways and blatant infidelities. Things begin to backfire for the queen bee, however, when she learns that Avery's sister Carol (Betsy Palmer) is engaged to Judson Prentiss (John Ireland), a man who also happens to be Eva's secret lover. As the poster art reads, "One female alone may be the queen bee. The other females serve only to sacrifice themselves while tending the queen bee or defending her. The males of the species exist only to serve the queen's pleasure..." Directed by Ranald MacDougall.
Candyman (1992). A century ago, Candyman - the educated son of an ex-slave - fell in love with the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner. The enraged plantation owner paid a band of thugs to exact a terrible revenge: They cut off Candyman’s hand with a rusty hacksaw. They then smashed up an apiary and smeared his body with the honey they took from the beehives, causing thousands of bees to sting him to death. Finally, they burned his body and scattered his ashes. Ever since that terrible day, if you look into a mirror and say his name five times, Candyman will appear behind you, a hook in place of his severed hand, and rip you to pieces. Graduate student Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) is writing a thesis on urban legends, and when she learns that the residents of an apartment block in the run-down Chicago neighbourhood of Cabrini Green live in fear of a mysterious figure called Candyman, she ventures over to the wrong side of the tracks to get some data for her project. Helen’s brutal beating at the hands of a street gang releases the real thing: Candyman’s vengeful spirit was kept alive by people believing in him...and fearing him. With Helen’s unwilling help, he’s going to have to terrify Cabrini Green all over again. Directed by Bernard Rose and Based on a story by Clive Barker.
Additional information on the publication:
The Revolt of the Bees proposes a new culture of memory and archiving in the true spirit of the beehive. It takes as its starting point the assumption that modern memory is first of all archival, and that the beehive and the paper hive (an archive or library) both fancy themselves utopias in which modern memory is stored up, as honey or as knowledge. The publication revolves around eleven lessons extracted from a larger examination of beehive metaphors in the rare book and manuscript collections of the University of Pennsylvania. These lessons envision the archive of the future as an organization open to the infinite possibilities of its own becoming. The Revolt of the Bees also explores theories of curatorial innovation and approaches curatorial practice as an evolving and future-oriented field, prompting questions such as how one might renew or reinvent an archival collection by constructing a new genealogy around a historical concept, and to whom or what a curator is ultimately responsible.
"The Revolt of the Bees artfully celebrates a set of images and associated practices that dominated the world of high culture for centuries. It teaches us to imagine with new vividness how early modern playwrights and poets, scholars and scientists, ladies and schoolboys went about the vital task of mastering and using books--at a time when books were the most powerful source of knowledge about life, the universe and everything, and a new way of reading could bring about events as radical as the Protestant Reformation and the English Civil War. This collection of evidence and the imaginative and sometimes subversive way in which it is displayed make a distinctive contribution to the new field of history of books and reading—an interdisciplinary study currently in an explosive phase of expansion." - Anthony Grafton
Aaron Levy is the Executive Director of and a Senior Curator at Slought Foundation. Since 1999, he has organized around 200 live events and exhibitions with artists and theorists critically engaging contemporary life. His publications include Cities Without Citizens (2004), which he edited with Eduardo Cadava as a companion volume to his Rosenbach Museum installation revisiting discussions about human rights and cities in Early America. He recently edited, with Jean-Michel Rabaté, William Anastasi’s Pataphysical Society: Jarry, Joyce, Duchamp and Cage (2005), engaging the work of pioneering conceptual artist William Anastasi in relation to his literary and artistic predecessors and contemporaries. “In which the thinking man finds himself...” is his first video production, and is included in this publication. It explores an archive in disarray in historic Founder’s Hall at Girard College in Philadelphia, and features a monologue adapted from a novel by Thomas Bernhard and read by Gary Indiana. He lectures on contemporary art and curatorial practice at the University of Pennsylvania.
Thaddeus A. Squire studied at Princeton University, as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Leipzig, Germany, and as an orchestral conducting student at Leipzig’s Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.” As Artistic and Executive Director of Relâche, Inc. for four years, he commissioned and developed over twenty world premiere works by leading contemporary composers from the United States and abroad. Mr. Squire shifted Relâche’s identity toward large interdisciplinary projects, exemplified by The Bell and the Glass, an installation and sound-art performance piece commissioned from artist Christian Marclay, with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2004, Mr. Squire founded Peregrine Arts, a multidisciplinary arts organization dedicated to producing, presenting, consulting and research across the fine and performing arts and humanities. Current projects include productions with artists Fred Ho, Ruth Margraff, Christian Marclay, Stephen Vitiello, Gavin Bryars and Bill Morrison, among others, alongside an annual presenting season in Philadelphia and consulting and research practices. He has served on numerous artistic and peer funding panels and is a Pennsylvania Humanities Council Commonwealth Speaker.
This program was made possible in part through the generous sponsorship of the Friends of the University of Pennsylvania Library, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Pennsylvania, the Bernice Gersh Foundation, Peregrine Arts, Inc., and Girard College. Beer at the launch party provided courtesy of Yards Brewing Company.
MLA Style:
Aaron Levy, et al. "Philadelphia Launch Party: The Revolt of the Bees." Slought Foundation Online Content. [14 October 2005;
Accessed 8 February 2012]. <http://slought.org/content/11309/>.
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