In the autumn before retreating to their anthill to overwinter, the wood ants eat all the energy-containing eggs and cocoons that would otherwise not survive the winter. Deep underneath the anthill, below the frost line, the wintering ants huddle together in large heat-storing lumps, their size similar to that of a clenched hand. The ants continue to change their place in the formation so that everyone in turn can get inside to keep warm. The queen ant is kept in the middle.
The works on display, however, have formed in dry, rigid, and rectangular spaces. Things that are barely perceptible move slowly on the edges of the field of vision, while others melt together in the middle of the room. There may have been a 56-hour blackout. Then the primates too gather in the warmest room of the house. Friends have deliberately forgotten some translucent materials in the studio. Texts have piled up and now form snowdrifts on both sides of the corridor. The workroom chaos has been simplified to an abstract, visual conundrum with a lossy compression; a sharp-edged polygon mesh; a porous, ruined space; a limitlessly scalable object that moves with the help of a mouse. The neighbours that are of different species have been in touch. The possibility of sculpting things, either in the dark or with completely closed eyes, remains to be taken into account.
Whiteness in its righteousness
bleaches creatures colorless
tolerates no
shadow
- Ursula K. Le Guin / Whiteness. Meditations for Melville, part II
