Revolt of the Bees, Wherein the Future of the Paper-hive is Declared is an exhibition that proposes a new culture of memory and archiving in true spirit of the beehive. It takes as its starting point the assumption that modern memory is first of all archival, and that the beehive and the paper hive (an archive or library) both fancy themselves utopias in which modern memory is stored up, as honey or as knowledge. The exhibition is comprised of eleven lessons extracted from a larger examination of beehive metaphors in the rare book and manuscript collections of the University of Pennsylvania. These lessons envision the archive of the future as an organization open to the infinite possibilities of its own becoming—an organization that is comfortable with its status as a living organism as well as with its own ultimate fragility and finitude.
This exhibition has been brought to you by Slought and the Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Pennsylvania.
