CODA247the current collapse of bee populations becomes emblematic of the cur-
rent anthropogenic stage when it is aligned with the simultaneously
worldwide increase in bovine farming caused by rising demand for meat
and other animal derivates. These different and seemingly unrelated bio-
technoecological economies are brought together in Swanson’s installa-
tion through the notions of sacrifice, purification, and rebirth.
Lippit argued that sacrifice is “a melancholic ritual, replete with sadism
and ambivalence, which repeats the origin of humanity.”^7 The support-
ing principle of Swanson’s Out of the Strong, Something Sweet is bougo-
nia, an ancient ritual, recounted by Virgil in the Georgics, involving the
miraculous rebirth of a bee swarm from the rotting carcass of a calf.^8
Losses in bee populations are not exclusive to the current stage of the
Anthropocene, but occurred in ancient Egypt as well as in modern Eu-
rope. For centuries, until the 1700s, the bougonia ritual provided a sort of
reparatory practice that was regularly included in beekeeping manuals.^9
Based on the prescientific theory of spontaneous generation, according
to which insects could be born from animal carcasses, bougonia involved
a sacrificial negotiation between visibility and invisibility.^10 And much of
the enchantment toward which Swanson’s installation thus rests on this
nonaffirmative negotiation that the viewer is invited to engage. A case in
point lies in the piece of the installation titled Caulbearers: a selection of
preserved and modeled cattle stomachs, which leverages upon the allu-
sive power of decontextualized animal matter gesturing to the material-
ity of beeswax and the structure of hive cells. Mimesis and resemblance
are made to intertwine in order to crumble the order of taxonomy and to
speculate about the possibility of alternative relational registers that could
have formed the backbone of what became classical scientific knowledge.
What would our world look like today if one of these analogical options
had been seriously pursued?
The installation comprises six distinct, but interrelated, pieces in different
media: Out of the Strong, Something Sweet; Regina Mortem; Caulbearers;
Swarms; Specimen Hides; and Bone Black. All pieces allude to the absent
presence of animal flesh through intriguing interplays of materiality involv-
ing animal skin, animal sounds, entrails, and bones. In Regina Mortem,
viewers are implicitly invited by the setup to place their heads between two
suspended bovine horns right where the animal skull would have been
(fig. C.1). Once the participant’s ears are aligned with the hollow cavities of
the horns, a crinkly noise becomes audible. Through repeated listening,