Published
Abellón. O libro negro das zoadeiras
Abellón is an audiovisual work produced by Xoán-Xil from the concert he gave with Ariel Ninas and Paula Ballesteros on 13 April 2023 as part of the programme Cuando el destino nos alcance. Acciones desesperadas ante la sexta extinción. Both the concert and this video activate elements from the publication Abellón. O libro negro das zoadeiras (A Central Folque, 2020), by Xoán-Xil and Mauro Sanín: a speculative essay examining the significance of insect buzzing in ritual practices through sonic experimentation and the case of the danza do abellón [bumblebee dance].
The danza do abellón was a funerary ritual performed at wakes in certain rural areas of Galicia in the early twentieth century. Participants formed a circle around the deceased and produced a bee-like buzzing sound intended to guide the soul into the other world. According to several Western traditions, these insects were believed to connect the divine and spiritual realms.
This work emerged from a series of intuitions, readings and investigations into buzzing as a paramusical sound capable of acquiring transcendental value in different cultures.
Although the account draws on disciplines including anthropology, history and musicology, it does not seek to be an exhaustive study. It is instead an open, suggestive proposal grounded in experimentation and sound creation, fields from which it invites us to reconsider our relationship with “noise.”
Were it necessary to categorise the work, it might be described as both a collection of curiosities and a speculative essay in the broadest sense: one that, through attentive listening and from a contemporary perspective, revisits the myth of bees within Galician popular practices associated with death.
The title of the programme, Cuando el destino nos alcance, refers to the Spanish title of Richard Fleischer’s 1973 film Soylent Green. Set in the then-future year of 2022, the film imagines a planet driven to a point of no return and food crisis by over-industrialisation and human overpopulation. It takes the form of a police thriller centred on the commercial distribution of the only food available to the population: “Soylent Green,” supposedly made from plankton. The plot is based on Harry Harrison’s novel Make Room! Make Room!, first published in 1966.
Cuando el destino nos alcance. Acciones desesperadas ante la sexta extinción. Viernes 14 de abril, 2023. Museo Reina Sofía