The ant chorus

Performance workshop (2018)

The space is strewn with building site detritus.
A simple choreography is performed based on the movements and different roles of ants in the colony: scouts, foragers and midden workers. A number of the performers mark out paths with coloured chalk for the others to follow (analogous to ants’ use of pheromone trails). The other “ants” then move along these lines, gradually sorting the material into piles.
A percussive sound collage emerges from their movements.
At various intervals the text is spoken, in unison or in groups. At the end of the performance, what remains in the space are the lines of coloured chalk on the floor and several sorted piles of detritus.

shiny, tiny specks
of consciousness sifting
sifting through the shifting sands
shifting in algorithmic rhythms, oscillations
entities with no identity

that know no hierarchy
with a grain of a brain
an atom of matter
the ants, the ants
the brilliance of tiny intelligence
of insect indifference
of equal unimportance
on the path of least resistance

we wander as you wonder
we wander as you wonder
these are your words not our words
our words are chemical, animal, edible
we incant them, we uncant them
among the bones and pulverised stones
together with the weather
composing and decomposing
there is no rest in the palimpsest


we leave the hole
we climb the hill
the whole, the sum of the parts
the hole, the home of the tiny particles
tiny, shiny
shiny beads of black blood
we flood in waves
we dance in circles
in scents in sentences in the sands
our words are chemical, animal, edible
we write them, we unwrite them
with the weather

we count the amount
using ancient bacterial numbering
how many of you?
how many of me?
measuring the uncanny equivalence
of the humans, of the ants
your weight, our weight
we wait
we form like your thoughts
every word an ant
every consonant
your syllables in our mandibles
your vowels are in our bowels
our heads are your full stops

sterile sisters in our tens of trillions
witnesses of a million summer suns
we come in waves, we dance in circles
we live out the sentences
the never ending sentences
unwriting themselves at both ends
shiny beads of black blood
we flood back into the hole
our comings our goings
on your future ruins
your doing is your undoing