What would the world look like if there were no bees? The documentary project Other Story asked this question when they met with biologist and cognitive ecologist Mathieu Lihoreau in a buzzing apiary outside of Toulouse, France.
Mathieu Lihoreau is an associate professor in ecology at the Research Center for Animal Cognition at University Paul Sabatier in Toulouse. Here, he works with cognitive processes in small-brained insects with a special focus on bees. In 2018 the Danish art collective Other Story met with him in the apiary at the site of the university to interview him about his work and how he experiences the climate disturbances – in his life as well as in the world of bees and insects.
Other Story is an ongoing documentary project working with short films to present personal stories in a world of monumental change. This is an alternative approach to news media, recording human testimonials based on heart-to-heart dialogues. Based in Copenhagen, and with active members from Denmark, Syria, the US, Afghanistan and England, Other Story seeks to move beyond easy categorization and facilitate the nuance, detail and sensitivity of the individual human story. Other Story collects stories and gathers voices. One human being at a time. One story at a time. Becoming a collection of personal stories of a changing world, told by the people who are living the change. Other Story carries out what they have themselves coined as Slow Journalism through a practice of Radical Softness.
The film A World Without Bees is about the innate ecological consciousness of the bees, but also about global, political issues in the light of the climate crisis, subtly conveyed through the words of the scientist Mathieu.
