Kekäläinen&Company Formica Fusca

Kirpilä Art Collection will host a new performance which takes the audience to the world of ants. When you look more closely at the worlds of ants and humans, you come across things which, despite of their great differences, tempt you to draw parallels. Two examples: of all the species only ants and humans have spread over the globe excluding polar regions and a speculative estimation has been presented that the common weight of all the ants would be roughly equal with the common weight of all humans.

In this work various activities of ants are observed: the path formation, the organization of the ant colony, communication, decision-making in task allocation, building activity, foraging and reproduction, i.e., the nuptial flight.

Throughout history, humans have projected onto ants concepts that say more about humans themselves than about ants. For example, the notions of queens and obedient workers date back to the times of l’ancien regime, while during the French Revolution, naturalists in Paris argued about ants as decent republicans.

Today, it is not clear which resembles the other more, robots or ants. Thus the assumptions about ants are like a mirror in which humans look at themselves.