248CODAthis noise manifests itself as the call of a virgin queen bee. As is known,
any given hive has space for only one queen, so the initial royal task of the
first-emerging queen bee is to identify the other unborn queens that are
still in their cells and to sting them to death. This stage in the installation
proposes a curious overlay of human, bovine, and bee, for the sound of a
queen bee hatching alludes to the essential step in the generation of a new
swarm in bougonia. The sound is connected to a narrativization that bears
substantial anthropomorphic traits: that of the deadly power disputes be-
tween royal heirs to the throne (and, by proxy, many other mundane power
struggles we are all involved in), reminding us how important power also
is in animal societies. This analogy is tightened further by the shadow cast
on the ground, which visually fuses the horns to the head of the partici-
pant. This embodied experience, for a few moments, invites an immersion in
the enchanted interconnectedness between human, bovine, and insect cen-
tral to the installation—an experience far from the epistemic distancing of
FIGURE C.1 Cole Swanson, Regina Mortem, 2016, from Out of the Strong, Something
Sweet. Exhibition curator Dawn Owen, 2016, Art Gallery of Guelph, Canada. Dean
Palmer Photography. © Cole Swanson.