ALADIN BORIOLI (CH, 1988)
Eyebeam Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future – Phase 2
With Joris Landman, Harry Bloch and Ellen Lapper
After completing a Bachelor in Photography at the ECAL/Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne (2014), Aladin Borioli pursued his own artistic practice and developed the DIY humanities research project Apian. Apian explores the age-old interspecies relationship between bees and humans. This research brought him closer to the humanities, hence the decision to undertake a master’s degree in Visual and Media Anthropology at the Freie Universität Berlin (2018).
His work borrows methods from ethnography and art and combine them with the practice of beekeeping. The results are polymorphous ethnographies, which mix different media such as text, photography, sound, videos. His project Apian also aims to be collaborative and has been a site for meeting around shared sensibilities, for example with the neurobiologist Randolf Menzel and the artists Laurent Güdel and Ellen Lapper.
The Intimacy Machine is a web platform that serves as a refuge where humans are able to have egalitarian encounters with bees without the need for physical proximity. The work pushes against the profit-driven technology used for managing the production of bee colonies by providing space for aesthetic and intimate encounters with them for anyone to experience for free on the Internet. During Phase 2, the project will integrate live-streaming and data visualisation in tandem with developing a blueprint for using technology in beekeeping and spreading this knowledge to a wider audience.