The Lavender Generator

The Lavender Generator is a self contained lavender honey biotope. The Lavender generator uses the specifics of the construction of simple ubiquitous transport palets to create a vertical lavender plantation that houses bee hives. The lavender is planted around the cabin, up the walls and across the roof. The lavender also grows on the paths into the openings of the cabin. It is a hommage to Beuys’s fascination with the generative qualities and different physical potential states of honey. For Beuys, bees embody a central complex in the exploration of creative potential: work (effort), process (time), energy (light), individuation (worker, queen), socialisation (bee colony, beehive) and product (honeycomb, honey). Whereas Beuys’s Honigpumpe am Arbeitsplatz (Documenta 1977) exemplifies the humanist and social philosophy specific to Beuys, the Lavender Generator shifts position and attention to a counter anthropocentric position; the generator is self-contained and seemingly inaccessible due to the lavender growing on the cabin’s entrance paths. Access can only be gained through some form of human ingenuity. The Lavender Generator resists being co-opted, drawing the spectator into the loop of desiring the inaccessible and left to behold the natural process which appears not to need him or her.
The Lavender Generator is made with 50 transport palets, 100 hessian sacks, earth and lavender plants. 8 beehives are installed at the entrance. Copyright Gandy Gallery / Markus Hansen / 2020