Lisa Korpos
Lisa Korpos is an interdisciplinary artist who investigates non-human perception, embodiment, and the aesthetics of vulnerability. She received a grant for “The Community Bee Clinic,” which is a radical veterinary practice, hybrid art-science project, and recurring interactive installation. Visitors learn how to become volunteer caregivers for ailing pollinators, treating common insect-health emergencies, such as malnourishment and hypothermia. She writes that the clinic aimed:
to create more visibility for the ongoing crises of pollinator decline and insect biodiversity loss. There is a need for sustained public engagement on the issue of insect biodiversity loss. However, this is a loss that is largely invisible to us as humans. My project attempts to bring more visibility to the scale and significance of this loss. The project also functions to document, highlight, and narrativize the struggles of the insects themselves through creative media representations and storytelling. Such stories train people to pay attention to scales of life that we do not ordinarily notice—a starting point for generating more advocacy and moral consideration toward these insects.
In December 2022, Lisa gave us an update on her work. She wrote:
The Community Bee Clinic has received both national and international attention! In September 2022, the project was included in an exhibition about global climate crisis and biodiversity loss titled 1.5° Celsius at the Michigan State University Museum. I was able to lead an interactive pollinator rescue workshop for about forty participants on campus in Lansing, MI, as well as having the radical veterinary practice itself featured inside the museum as a participatory exhibit. The 1.5° Celsius show will be ongoing until February 2023. On a similar note, I was also honored and humbled to have the Community Bee Clinic included in the “Tools for a Warming Planet” exhibition at Arts Santa Monica in Barcelona, Spain this summer! This same exhibition went on to be shown at the Ars Electronica Festival in Germany—an annual event recognized as the world’s preeminent festival of art, technology and social issues. Over 70,000 people attended the festival this year, and I’m honored to report that the Community Bee Clinic was represented in it as part of the “Collaborative Ecosystems for a Sustainable World” show. All of this has been made possible, in part, due to CAF funding.
Furthermore, she wrote:
Artistic “interventions” staged in farmers markets will continue well into 2023, and perhaps even beyond. The CAF grant has already allowed me to procure a pop-up tent, as well as supplies for several hundred take-away honeybee rescue kits meant for participants at the public events.
