Samenvatting

We are living in an era in which much is expected of the arts. But mostly not of the arts by themselves, but of the arts in conjunction with the outside world, be it other disciplines, or be it people who are not artists themselves. In the project The silence of the bees, we expect something form the arts in conjunction with nature and science. And we talk about culture in stead of arts to emphasize that we ask from the arts to have an alliance with nature, with science and with real people dealing with it. In the silence of the bees, as in in many contemporary interdisciplinary, participatory projects, we expect new things from the arts besides making art that can be exhibited in musea or galleries. We expect from the arts to intervene in not artistic regions and be of impact. We expect them to be change agents, and the more we think about crises, the more we tend to believe that we are not able to move but in the destructive direction, the more we talk about wicked problems, the more we hope the arts to be of help.