Paper short abstract:

At the beginning of his career, Dr. Menzel had several dreams of transforming into his subject of research. During the night and sometimes during the day, he became a bee. Using a collaborative approach, the film sees his dreams as a way to build methods for exploring other-than-human minds.

Paper long abstract:

Therianthropy is an ongoing work, mixing a documentary approach with video art, part of a DIY project called Apian which explores the age-old relationship between humans and bees (www.apian.ch). The film builds on Randolf Menzel’s dreams, a German zoologist who dedicated his life to studying bees. At the beginning of his career, he dreamt of becoming a bee. During the night and sometimes during the day, he had recurring experiences of shapeshifting into his subject of research. Evolving in line with his discoveries in the lab, his dreams, in return, were prompting certain directions in his research. Today, his dreams have stopped. They contain, however, a blueprint for methods of becoming. Whilst dreaming, the feedback loop of the sensomotoric system is numbed, lowering sensorial inputs. Meanwhile, the relation between the signifier and the signified is blurred, the two blend into each other, reducing the primacy of language. This work therefore sees dreams as lands where access to other-than-human minds is facilitated; an ideal space to ask what is it like to be a bee. Concerning the status of the film, the writing phase is almost over, about half of the filming is done, especially the scenes with Dr. Menzel which is based on a long-term collaboration with him directly in the field. During the workshop, I would like to tackle ontological and epistemological questions underlining the project and talk about its odd position between an art piece, a documentary and an ethnographic film.