Teän Roberts

Hivism : 

noun

/hʌɪvɪz(ə)m/

A 21st century art movement that rejects idea of the individual artist-as-genius, and moves towards a more interconnected, interdependent mode of art making. Within the hive, creativity is connective and artists constantly influence and inspire each other, consciously, unconsciously and playfully. This structure is mutually supportive, caring and generative - evoking the quality of the bee-hive as well as the hive-mind. 

Hivism was originally coined by Skye Turner and Teän Roberts on the Contemporary Art Practice MA at the Royal College of Art in London in September 2022.

Mani-fester-o Point 1 : Hivism is a Lifting Swamp

In Hivism, the energy of the collective swamps the self with lifting juices. In this swamp ideas swim freely, easily traversing our porous membranes and mingling in one another’s creative practices. 

We recognise that we are all influencing and shaping each other’s creative work all the time, in intentional and unintentional ways, and we find this kind of connectivity to be magical and enlivening.

To be hivic is to trust and welcome these connections, to hold ideas lightly without grasping for originality of ownership, and to understand that - like bees in a hive - we can go further, fly higher, thrive juicer, live sweeter (and make better art) together, than we can apart.

Mani-fester-o Point 2 : Hivism is a Biomorphic Dreamscape

Hivism believes in practicing interspecies interconnectedness, de-centring the importance of the human experience and learning from the natural world. Our work investigates the anthropomorphic and biomorphic, referencing animals and their secreted structures, life cycles and migration patterns. From bees to eels and deep sea sharks, Hivism is intertwined with the mysteries posed by more-than-human others.

Mani-fester-o Point 3 : Hivism is a Cult of Care

Hivism resists the myth of artist as individual genius - suspecting this to be a capitalist trick to keep us separated and disempowered. Instead we are spinning new myths, which co-create a latticework of support for ourselves and each other. We recognise that we are more powerful together, and insist that artists don’t want to always work alone. 

Being Hivic is to recognise that our greatest artwork is the lives that we live and the relationships we tend: with each other, our communities and the environment. Playful, tender and transformative, in Hivism we prioritise care in our relationships and strive to meet one and other’s gestural needs.

Mani-fester-o Point 4: Hivism is an Compostable Methodology  

As in a bee colony, Hivism is constantly replenishing, evolving, and forever unfinished. Like the old cells of a beehive, parts rot and fall away to make space for new, more enlivened growth and movement. 

We are happy to turn our old ideas into compost in order to bloom something new, not for the sake of exponential growth and progress (yuck), but because we understand that Hivism exists best in motion. With our unfurling evolution, we understand ourselves to be developing and modelling imperfect alternatives, trying out ways that might eventually, with the right tending, outgrow oppressive structures and hierarchies. Hivism is transformative. 

Hvism thanks those we learn from: adreinne marie brown, Sophie Strand, bell hooks, Chantal Faust, Marguerite Humeau, Adam Kaasa, Ursula K Le Guin