SCREENING / INSTALLATION: BEATRICE MARCHI | LA COMPAGNIA – TO BE A B(EE)

In La Compagnia – To Be a B(ee), artist Beatrice Marchi combines video, performance, music, and stop-motion animation into a surreal narrative about belonging, group dynamics, and the desire to be someone else. A fly wants to become a bee; a girl wants to be part of a group called “B.” Their stories intersect in a recurring song: “I think I would like to be a B(ee)…”.

The film weaves together childhood memories and real events from a small town in northern Italy in the early 2000s with an enigmatic story about friendship, rivalry, and exclusion—and about a community that performs secret rituals in the forest. Animated paintings and live-action footage blend seamlessly. Between reality and fantasy, characters and relationships emerge that seem humorous and eerie, familiar and yet foreign. The bee moves as a recurring figure through these in-betweens: between the desire to belong and the experience of being excluded.

At Kunst Raum Mitte, the film will be accompanied by a live performance at the DISSOLUTIONS closing event on December 6, during which a choir assembled by Marchi will sing the film’s central song. Video imagery and live vocals, the past and the present, and different generations thus come into dialogue with one another.

Image: Beatrice Marchi, La Compagnia – To Be a B(ee), 2025 (video still). Courtesy the artist.