Research

Buzzing Against Collapse is an auto autoethnographic study conducted with Damià Sinfreu’s in the small village of Sant Julià de Lória, Andorra, in March 2024. The concept of ‘buzzing’ refers to a communicative practice that challenges human exceptionalism and promotes response-able understandings of planetary dynamics. This study illustrates how recognizing the agency of more-than-human beings can provide entirely new avenues to inhabiting a precarious world. This approach moves beyond catastrophic discourses and established thought structures and emphasizes the importance of the narratives produced by subjects commonly marginalized, disregarded, and forgotten in Western canons of knowledge.

Overall, Buzzing Against Collapse explores stories told by more-than-human beings that are different from Cartesian thought structures that perpetuate hierarchies between humans and nature—and among humans themselves. By examining alternative cosmologies and storytelling practices as an effort to oppose collapse, this work advocates for a shift away from the centrality of the human and proposes relational communication practices that acknowledge the subjectivity of diverse life forms. 
 

To better illustrate buzzing, this audio shows the moment Marina and I were checking on the bee boxes and the bees started to buzz. The sound of me desperately trying to gush smoke on the bees is also noticeable, while Marina intends to tell me that the smoke we have is enough to calm the bees down.

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The photograph used was taken by me with my Olympus Pen camera, using an Ilford HP5 film, in March 2024, during my visit to Damià's house.