The Paper Working Bee (2025)

The Paper Working Bee (2025)

The Paper Working Bee (2025) is an analogue paper collage that came alive through animation and sound to convey the idea of an overworked, stressed-out and exhausted creative worker. It is how I processed and expressed feeling exhausted. It also represents how I reconnected with analogue work, collage making and art itself.

Materials: Flyers & Magazines, Glue, Scissors
Machines: Scanner, Laptop
Software: Adobe Photoshop (photo editing), After Effects (animation), Audition (sound design)

Starting with the intention to make a collage from a pile of art flyers and magazines, I let my intuition guide the process of making an analogue paper collage entirely analog. The image was constructed through iterating cut out shapes, until their assembly formed a type of person as a bee, a working bee, exhausted from working on the keyboard, typing thoughts. Which was exactly what I did not want to do at the time. I urged to create something analogue. Once I glued everything into place, I scanned the image (clever me, should have scanned the shapes first!), separated all layers again in Photoshop, so that it was possible to animated them individually (e.g. the bees wings). In After Effects all layers where placed, connected, animated in a way that resembles a bee flying away and back to the desk, where the bee or creative worker was working on. Once the animation and color grading was done, I found sounds and music for each movement and built the soundscape in After Effects. Everything put together became an exiting piece of work, which I am very proud of.