TANK HONEY

Participatory performance | Site-specific installation | Video | Film | Photo | Harvest
2015–2018

TANK HONEY began with Maryse Goudreau’s discovery of a WWII-era tank buried on land shared with her neighbours. In order to bring new life to the abandoned military vehicle, Goudreau organized its excavation/transformation as a project actively involving members of the local community, which she dubbed Festival du Tank d’Escuminac — première et dernière édition. During an open discussion that took place on the last day of the event, it was decided that the tank be converted into a habitat that could host an army of bees, and that the gun itself be transformed into a hive producing “tank honey”. As such, the tank became a symbol of the revitalization of the territory through agriculture, and a commemoration of the region’s often abandoned farmlands.

The ephemeral site where the project took place was captured in a documentary film also entitled Festival du Tank d’Escuminac — première et dernière édition, infrared photos, cyanotypes, documentary photos, artifacts, a video, Tankonautes, and an installation, Miel de tank, as well as various other fertile fictions. For every piece in this body of work, Goudreau combines her personal interventions with collaborative actions from nine artists and 200 participants that bring the tank back to life, transforming it by working together. Each collaboration makes manifest a unique way of relating to others and to nature.

Three years after the initial event, Goudreau decided to hide the Universal Carrier in the nearby woods where nature would become its new caretaker, in hopes that the tank might fertilize a future generation of stories.

︎Information sheet

MARYSE GOUDREAU

TANK HONEY