OK, when did you last think about insects? When a famished mosquito tried to snack on your forearm? When you saw eight unsightly legs loitering beside the bookshelf? When the flies dove into the leftover curry on the counter?
Chances are you don’t consider our antennae-wearing friends unless they’re, you know, bugging you. The organizers of this weekend’s Pestival would like to change that, giving you an opportunity to see how insects affect our world--for the better--and how we can return the favor.
From today through Sunday, Pestival brings together an international group of artists, musicians, and scientists to celebrate “the insects in art and the art of being an insect.” Whether you’re an armchair entomologist or merely curious about what could be buzzing around in your back garden, it’s well worth a trip to the Southbank Centre to meet the beetles...and the bees and the ants and the weevils and countless other fliers, crawlers, and wrigglers. “We're including mollusks and amoebas under the remit pest,” says tonight’s musical guest Robyn Hitchcock. “It's one big squirming mass.”
With somewhere around a million different species, insects account for better than half of all of the living things on earth and they’re by far our planet’s most diverse collection of creatures. While some of them have worse reputations than the cast of Big Brother, the Pestival organizers astutely point out that “for every insect that presents some form of hazard there are a myriad more on which we depend as crucial providers at a critical level in the food chain.”
Here’s where it gets cool. The Southbank Centre is, ahem, the place to bee this weekend, for everything from learning praying mantis kung fu to watching maggots paint (no, really) to making your own insect mask. You can walk through a room-sized replica of a termite mound or cruise around in the Bee Cab, a working black cab with an equally hardworking beehive in the passenger seat. The science fans can learn how insects can help solve crimes or why mosquitos may gnaw on you more than your less-tasty neighbor. Also, where else could you see artist Noboru Tsubaki’s Vegetable Wasp homage to Michael Jackson?
The plight of the honeybee is the focus of the Queen Elizabeth Hall--renamed the Queen Bee Hall for the weekend--and the hive will showcase both bees in art and bees as art. The rechristened QBH also plays host to mainstage performances from Robyn Hitchcock, Robin Ince, and Chris Watson.
“I've always liked the look of insects,” says Hitchcock, who also played the inaugural Pestival. “They are echoed in the design of helicopters, planes, small cars, and even sailing boats, so maybe that's why they--and arachnids like the tarantula--appear from time to time in my songs.” His show tonight will feature the debut of “Dragonfly Me”--a song composed especially for this event--along with some of his other odes to arthropods like “Madonna Of The Wasps”, “Red Locust Frenzy”, and “Antwoman”.
A swarm of other musicians and collaborators are scheduled to join Hitchcock onstage, including Graham Coxon, Alessi’s Ark, Mike Mills (of R.E.M.) and Green Gartside (of Scritti Politti).
The Bee Hive Ball immediately follows the concert, although to attend, one must adhere to a strict dress code of wings, antennae, and that insect mask you made earlier in the day.
On Saturday night, the QBH will showcase funnyman Robin Ince as he presents an evening of insect-inspired cabaret and comedy. This year’s Pestival will conclude on Sunday night with BBC sound recordist and founder of Cabaret Voltaire Chris Watson performing his “bee symphony”, providing an evening of avant-garde insect-themed music, including a choir dueting with live bees.
All the bug puns aside, Pestival promises to be an entertaining cross-pollination of art and science. If we better comprehend these often overlooked members of our ecosystem, we may better conserve the ones in danger--like the beleaguered honeybee.
“Pestival [draws] attention to the peril that bees are now in and the consequences for the environment,” Hitchcock notes, “Which, of course, we are in too, whether we know it or not.”
For additional information, tickets to the musical performances and a full schedule, visit pestival.org or the Southbank Centre’s website.