824: Deadass Beekeeping and Beyond with Gecile Fojas and Anthony Virey 

**Gecile Fojas** (0:00)
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**Anthony Virey** (0:49)
Over the pandemic in 2020, I was beekeeping every day. There was one day where I was wearing my Yankee-fitted under the beekeeping veil and took a selfie on Instagram and someone DMed me. I was like, yo, you guys like really deadass beekeeping out there?
And like something clicked in my head.

**Aliza Abarbanel** (1:10)
This is TASTE. I'm your host, Aliza Abarbanel.
Gecile Fojas and Anthony Virey are the team behind HOSE New York, a creative R&D studio observing systems that shape culture, ecology and consumption. Their projects include the honey brand Deadass Beekeeping, the beverages pop-up Palate Service, and the Listening Apiary and Hive Theory, an installation and live radio show streaming the sounds of their beehives at Wave Farm Art Park. Gecile and Anthony stopped by the studio to talk about the ethos and systems driving their many creative processes, including what's next. Gecile Fojas and Anthony Virey, this is TASTE. Thank you for coming on the podcast.

**Gecile Fojas** (1:55)
Thank you for having us.

**Anthony Virey** (1:56)
Thanks so much for having us.

**Aliza Abarbanel** (1:57)
I'm really happy to have you in the studio to talk about your many fascinating projects. I know that you sometimes do a radio show with bees, and I'm curious what the difference is between having bees on a radio show and yourself being on a podcast.

**Gecile Fojas** (2:12)
They are our co-hosts, if anything. So our bees are part of a art installation. They are living in an art park at Wayne Farm Art Park. Wayne Farm is a non-profit that focuses on transmission and broadcasting and transmission art. So our bees are the newest art installation. So one of our hives, it's miked up. There are two types of mics, a capsule mic and a contact mic.
So we record them, then put them on our show and we talk about different topics that are related to beekeeping and our different observations like how they communicate. A lot of people don't know that bees communicate through different ways, through movement, pheromones.
When we listen to the bees, there are different types of hums. So with these microphones, sometimes you'll hear like a crackling noise, and it sounds like a bag of chips ruffling, and that's actually them walking on top of the contact mic, and sometimes you'll hear a loud buzz, and that's captured by the capsule mic. So it's really, really beautiful. It's very calming and nice like ambient sound. It's really, really, really dope.

**Anthony Virey** (3:35)
Yeah, we've also played the bee sounds in a spatial studio before, and you get goose bumps because it's so immersive. You feel and it sounds like you're in the hive, and I think just humans instinctually hear all these buzzings and think we're going to get stung. So you know, you get this visceral reaction.
But after a while, it's very calming. And beekeeping, you just get used to the hums. It becomes white noise.

**Aliza Abarbanel** (4:07)
Yeah, I have so many questions about beekeeping.
I feel so tenderly towards bees whenever I see them, and I obviously love their work. I love honey. And I'm curious how you both found yourself in beekeeping and what maybe draws you to beekeeping as, would you call it like an art practice or a business or a calling?

**Anthony Virey** (4:31)
Yeah, I think we like calling it like a design practice. You know, I feel like art is sometimes very cerebral and business is a little too profit driven. Design is like creation with meaning and use. So I think design is like a nice lens that we like to position our practice in. And when it comes to the beekeeping, I started beekeeping back in 2019 with my uncle because he selfishly wanted to improve the quality of his soil. So he had purchased this abandoned farmland in rural Pennsylvania almost like over a decade ago. And most of my family, we thought it was crazy because we're a bunch of native New Yorkers. And he's like a specifically like a darker skinned Filipino dude. And he bought this farmland in like rural, rural Pennsylvania and we were like, what are you doing?