Bastard Bee (2001)

Video, 2 minutes 26 seconds

Bastard Bee (2001)

Bastard Bee immediately presents us with a characteristically obtuse, amusing and incongruous image. Melody, dressed in a clown-like bee costume, revs up an electric chain saw, after initially wielding the chainsaw at the camera she saws directly down the middle of a chair.

The chair can be a useful item, something that supports us in rest or work, though Melody is using the chair here as an object of apathy. When it comes to addressing our anger, and other emotions, apathy can be the object of obstruction.

Jim O'Rourke says,

"Your thinking on your feet

While your sitting there on your ass."

There is something beautiful in even the harshest of sounds. Letting out our emotions can be a painful experience and sometimes it feels like we need a chainsaw to help us cut through the dead wood.

A bee can sting. A saw can sever. Bastard Bee calls to our attention that which stings us, that emotion, or punctuation, that insists our engagement with our self.   

Jim O'Rourke, (1999), Eureka , Eureka (Domino Records, London).

Written by Will Pollard

Bastard Bee is the most exasperated of Melody's alter ego's. The costume is a childlike representation of a bee and wields a chainsaw, interacting with the audience. The bee revs up the chainsaw and tackles the wooden chair with a large amount of pent up energy. He thrusts it wildly facing the camera, a nervous moment for the viewer who is confronted with essentially hysterical ball of fur holding an offensive weapon. Bastard Bee has also performed at the ‘Seen' Live Art Festival in 2004. He occupied a cubicle in ‘The Blue X' a lap dance club in the centre of Leicester where he gave free one to one lap dances with a difference. The dark and murky film shows Bastard Bee dancing to Marilyn Manson's version of ‘Tainted Love', manically waving a plastic cricket bat and a pair of fake boobs glued to the front of his outfit. By these sometimes outrageous performances Victoria Melody suggests that similar to the drone (the male bee who is both fully dependant and does everything he can for his queen), our lives and views can be prostituted in order to thrive in society.

Written by Bridget Cusack