“Co-actors with other intentions – that’s probably quite an accurate description. But you know what I see in them…?
A living force with its own aims, which we can only guess. And we do.

I have great respect for rational science. But! On the other hand, lived reality sometimes resists rational explanation.
Not to mention that most of humankind adheres to some monotheistic faith — a belief in a higher truth behind the curtain.
Science also studies the geographical and biological roots of this feature of the human mind. We seem to be predisposed to it as a species:
to believe in the supernatural and at the same time to study it logically.
 

Bees possess their own intelligence — instincts, communication, and an ability for instinctive cooperation of individuals for the good of the whole superorganism. They almost certainly do not understand our perception. They almost certainly have no idea that they are kept by humans, a powerful symbiont — or parasite? — who has them entirely in his power and, when he deems a colony unpromising, or when ordered by the Veterinary Authority, kills the whole hive with a single sulphur wick. They almost certainly cannot read human text, yet they have their own “texts” in the bee dance. They almost certainly cannot read the images I place inside the hive — and yet, perhaps, perhaps they can.
After all, both we and the bees see, and may perceive some images in a similar way.
 

What interests me is to provoke that irrational part of our mind. I’m drawn to the ‘almost’ in the phrase almost certainly.
I experience a kind of bliss — perhaps a Kokolia-like one — when I tell viewers that I insert poems and letters into the hive and wait for a reply, and they start laughing. What is so funny about that? Do they laugh at the naivety of the artist, at him making fun of them, or of himself?
And then the bees precisely “finish” the bodies in the painting Forest Beings, and a child psychologist would judge their performance
as that of a bright three- or five-year-old.

Bees almost certainly do not wish to create art, exhibit it, or gain anything from cooperation with humans.
They remove an obstacle — and just like water, wind, or a rabbit in its hutch, they interact with their environment instinctively.
So much for reason, right?

I should not forget to mention a time of mental crisis in 2000 — a period of altered state of mind that deeply shaped my view of reality.
The bees have never really fallen into that category for me; I have never had schizophrenic perceptions of communicating with them within the limits of human intelligence.

It’s rather that zen kind of humour, when I am rationally and emotionally grounded in the present moment, perceiving reality truthfully, while working with the theme of that edge between worlds — worlds formed by different kinds of mind. I draw on direct experience of zazen, when perception shifts — hard to describe — I think more with my back straightening than with verbal thoughts.
And then I wonder how the beehive thinks.
They sense me, and when not deceived by smoke, they launch at me as at a mammalian predator — stinging my face, my eyes...

How do the bees I love live their world — the diligent work I love, the scent I love, the hum I love?

With all that, I go to the human viewer carrying the papers bitten by bees — and then the viewer begins to contemplate the matter in their own way.”

Jan Karpíšek, November 2025