Killing Hornets

Installation with recliner, papier mache, wire mesh, two-channel video, drawing. 2007.

Killing Hornets arose out of a series of interactions between me and a swarm of hornets which colonized a recliner on the porch of my house. The history of the project stems from an incident in which I was stung by a hornet from the nest, provoking me to enter into conflict with the hive. Through a series of maneuvers the chair was flipped over, a hose stuffed inside and the hornet nest flooded and destroyed. During this activity I documented the aftermath of my activities with video footage, collecting two videos which depict the hornets evacuating the chair as water flows out of it and a group of hornets trapped in jars on my kitchen table. Stemming from these events I decided to rebuild a hornet nest in the chair as symbolic restitution for my previous acts. This half-assed reconciliatory gesture and the previous atrocities I visited upon the hornets serve as an allegorical examination of conflict on a more global scale. Through a highly subjective mind map drawing these connections are made apparent, embedding the project in a broader discussion on the nature of ideological, cultural and specie difference.