Dismantling Monoculture: Beehive Design Collective in Santa Cruz on April 15

A swarm is coming! The Beehive Design Collective- a non-profit, volunteer driven, political arts organization based in eastern Maine is headed this way. The group’s mission is to “cross pollinate the grassroots” through the creation of images as an effective medium for deconstructing and educating the public about complex geopolitical issues.

The bees create collaborative, hand-illustrated posters of dizzying intricacy which are patchwork “quilts” of personal stories related to them in their travels by communities in the global south. In their incendiary “Dismantling Monoculture” presentation, the bees take participants on a “tour” through their larger than life graphic trilogy of the multifold effects of globalization, militarism, and resource extraction in the Western Hemisphere. Their stories ricochet from the rampant consumption of the global north, and its impacts on the peoples of Central and South America. Interweaving anecdotes and statistics, they perforate dubious “drug war” rhetoric, expose broad connections between militarism and resource extraction, and expose anchor of today’s global economy as rooted deeply in colonialism. In the sequence of their visuals, the Bees walk participants through the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Plan Colombia, and their nigh-complete Mesoamerica Resiste pieces.

The Beehive Collective is currently touring the United States to raise funds for the printing and distribution of Mesoamerica Resiste, previewed during their presentation along with a thorough venture through their creative method. Two years in the making, this trilogy-finale is an exploration of widespread resistance to a proposed Central American megadevelopment project known as Plan Puebla Panama.