Doris Denekamp and Jimini Hignett have been invited by curators Joop Hoogeveen (Kunstvereniging Diepenheim) and Peter Sonderen (Professorship Theory in the Arts, at ArtEZ) to design a garden under the heading 'The Non-Urban Garden'. During the design trajectory Gabriëlle Schleijpen (Head of DAI), will act as a sparring partner for the two artists.

"Our presentation, last month, of our research and plan for a Non-Urban Garden specifically for bees was greeted with enthusiasm, and we have been invited to produce the final design concept for If Bees Are Few...

However... a number of logistical factors, in particular the difficulty of finding a large location for the fantasy plan we had envisaged as well as the problem of upkeep, have led us to re-developed our ideas for the actualisation of the Non-Urban Garden...

The definitive plan If Bees Are Few... consists of two complimentary parts. The first part entails a sculptural work in the landscape – two beehives, one of which is inhabited by bees and buzzes with life, the other, its companion is silent, fossilised. This second hive has been cast in concrete and forms a kind of burial monument for the honeybee. To allow the inner life of the living hive more perceptible to the public, the hive will be fitted with a stethoscopic contraption to enable one to listen to the noise of the swarm.

The second part of If Bees Are Few... will be an artists' book. This publication, together with the hives, is the 'Non-Urban Garden'. In collaboration with Swiss designer Anna Haas (alumna Werkplaats Typografie) we will develop a book that propagates the story of the bee. The project's title forms the premise for the book – what if bees die out, what is lost if bees are no more? Not only in the practical sense – the pollination of plants, the consequences for food and the economy – but also in the imaginative or symbolic sense – bees having had such a prominent place in mythology and legend, etc. As the book should encompass not only the past and the present in terms of bees, but also the future, we have decided to ask someone to write a fictitious story relating to the idea – If bees are few... We will send a collection of ingredients relating to bees, a kind of 'time-capsule' that could have been launched in order to explain bees to some future generation at a time when bees no longer exist, to our prospective author as the basis for a story from the perspective of a future (or even from the perspective of the almost extinct bee in the future...) when this scenario has become reality. The contents of the capsule will function as a collage through which, in an associative fashion, the history of the bee from mythical creature to its marginalisation in current society. This archive of images, artefacts and articles will form the background for the story. In addition to this, several pages of the book will be impregnated with the seeds of plants propitious to bees, in this way the book If Bees Are Few... itself, when planted, really does become the Non-Urban Garden".

Read about he preceding trajectory