ABSTRACT:

Scientific knowledge has yet to succeed in changing human relation to nature, despite the awareness that it is human actions that drive climate change. Scientists argue that thinking in new ways is not enough in order to render change. Instead a re-sensing and re-embodying is called for.

This case study examines Bybi’s Honey Ceremony – a practice inspired by the ingenious thinking of the gift economy. Robin Wall Kimmerer reintroduces the gift economy but without concrete instructions on how to practice it. Bybi’s honey ceremony is an interpretation of that, offering the honey as an invitation, not a product.

Presenting the honey in an aesthetic and sensuous staging however risks enforcing a dual perception of two worlds: the one we live and consume in, and another, caring, but seemingly unobtainable world, fostering a core dilemma of how to bridge the two worlds.

The power of speaking in togetherness through the Impossible Conversation will be utilized as a method to derive how the obligations are understood in a modern western context, leading to a conclusion that neither thoughts, actions nor conversations stand alone in bridging the two worlds.