Gray Hive

Gray Hive, a project consisting of performance video, installation and photography, is a result of grafting two different systems. Humanity has always dreamed of eternal youth, and achievements in scientific technology have raised life expectancy up to 100 years. However, the question remains as to whether our happiness is also extended by increased life expectancy. When talking about the future, we are inclined to think of elaborate technologies, despite the possibility that our realistic future might actually be that of elderly loneliness — somewhat removed from technology.

Shin creates an imaginary space by grafting the actual living condition of the elderly living alone onto the ecology of bees. Age-related degeneration causes the elderly to form different worlds of living. Honeybees build hives with wax that is produced by their own bodies. Adding a roof-shaped form underneath a typical house shape results in a beehive structure; such routine, efficient and scientific repetitiveness soon takes on a closed nature that is difficult to break down, and which becomes a living space for the old and lonely.

In the performance video, the old man also takes a daily ration of wax coins, and repeats the act of melting them and using them as wallpaper to gradually thicken the wall. As implied by the contradictory term ‘forced leisure’, which forms a large part of elderly people’s life patterns, the situation in which the nature of order and rule that they are supposed to create and maintain by themselves becomes a shackle looks like a black comedy, giving no clue whether to laugh or cry.

The hive of the elderly living alone suggests shantytown; it is made out of cheap materials used in industry or on construction sites, but is also somewhat futuristic. This collision is a device that inhibits empathy by displaying the old man’s performance as fictional and ludicrous. Minimalist music, in accordance with the repetitive moves shown in the video, fosters empathy and maintains distance through regularity at the same time.