Intervention #3, Self : Animals

Pamela Wilson, 2023

Collaborators: Michael Hellein, Emmett Hellein, Harlan Morehouse, ant colony beneath and inside the walls of the Wolf Kahn Barn at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT

Materials: Photos of original performance, video of performance, wipes container, pedestal, spray bottle, artist-drawn “line” on gallery floor.

This installation at Studio Place Arts presents documentation from a performance piece created during an artist residency in May, 2023 at the Vermont Studio Center. One of a series of nine artworks or performances, Intervention #3, Self : Animals was developed from the Ghosts/Monsters framework developed by Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan and Nils Budbandt in their collection “Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet.”

The book considers how human inhabitants of earth can reimagine and reconceptualize survival skills based on the close study of other living beings who have had to dramatically (monstrously?) change their behavioral patterns to ensure survival. It considers how life has managed to adapt, sustain or thrive in regions where human ecological folly has resulted in geographic regions and biomes “haunted” by human choices and presents a range of adaptation frameworks humans might utilize in a variety of future climate-disaster or resource-scarcity scenarios. Each of the nine Interventions developed by the artist utilized intimate observation of her surroundings and available resources to imagine/reimagine 9 new relationships with a non-human beings, materials, presences or concepts.

Intervention #3, Self : Animals was developed following observation of spring ants exploring the Wolf Kahn Barn studios and hallways during the unseasonably warm May weather of 2023. What began as a practical problem– eradicating or deterring the ants in a studio filled with botanical dyes, natural pigments and food-grade dyestuff–became an opportunity to explore the sharing of space, the drawing of lines and boundaries, collectivist vs singular concepts of the self, individual vs. collective effort, the development or degradation of communication networks and multiple methods of intraspecies/cross-species regard.

The artist identified the ants’ point of entry, marked it with tape and wiped a half-circle of soap and water around each side of the ants’ entrypoint. The soap circle was bisected by a studio wall, with half of the arc appearing studio-side and half hallway-side. In removing the chemicals ants utilize to signal direction and intent to peers, the artist interrupted the communication network between one singular explorer ant and the collective. The collective–receiving no signals from the explorer ants about directions worth collectively pursuing–remained in the wall. Over the course of the week, a full, bisected circle appeared on the floor from repeated wipings. One half of the circle contained the explorer ants, working in isolation to identify opportunities for collective action. One half of the circle contained nothing of note until the final day of the residency, when the body of a dead cranefly blew inside the artist-created boundary. Many ants appeared to work to move the large insect. The artist documented the work of ants on both sides of the wall and of herself establishing the circular boundary in which the action happened.

The development of this piece was partially funded by the Vermont Arts Council, Vermont Studio Center and National Endowment for the Arts. Technical assistance provided by Alpine Media.