// new media class


Felix Müller — Bark Beetle Guerilla

Legacy — Winter 2021

Urban nature is highly moralized and infantilized. This also leads to the Bambi effect. The Bambi effects says that we, as humans, can only see the positive and beautiful aspects of nature. The negative aspects like death and disease recede into the background for us. Even the negative aspects are constantly being removed by nature especially in urban surrounding.

The bark beetle is a metaphor of this and also a sign, how we experience nature. Even though the bark beetle is an important part of nature, it is constantly removed from it. The art installation "Bark Beetle Guerrilla" plays with the thought of bark beetle guerrilla groups which act to reclaim the urban surrounding. By the autoactive installation, the will of the bark beetle, to create more living space for its own species, is accelerated by a machine. This machine is playfully integrated in urban nature.