The 3 Bees in the Bonnet of Borobudur

THE SECRETS OF BOROBUDUR

INAC, 2023

The 5 of Borobudur

Large and complex is the presence of the bee in Greek literature, a sign of the importance of beekeeping in the economy of this civilization since ancient times. The oldest appear in the Homeric poems [1] , which contain large traces of archaic myths and traditions, even before the drafting of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Fable of the Bees

iNAC, 2022

The destiny of Borobudur

Swara - Journal of the East African Wildlife Society Vol. 27 (4)

This project is an exploration of the paradoxical logic, presences and forms that circulate around Borobudur, a 9th-century AD Buddhist monument in Central Java, Indonesia. Having accrued a veritable archive of contradictory imagistic representations from its colonial "rediscovery" in 1814, the latent frictions in narrating Borobudur came to an explosive flashpoint during the moment of its preservation between 1955 and 1983. Borobudur thus exists at the nexus of imaginaries that continue to unfold: it is these imaginaries, and their representational manifestations, that guide this project. This thesis was completed towards fulfilling a BA Architecture (History, Theory & Criticism concentration) at Yale. It was awarded the John Addison Porter Prize.

That buzzing-noise means something. You don't get a buzzing-noise like that, just buzzing and buzzing, without its meaning something. If there's a buzzing-noise, somebody's making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you're a bee." Then he thought another long time, and said: "And the only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey." And then he got up, and said: "And the only reason for making honey is so as I can eat it." (A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh, Ch. 1)