Andria Keen

Distracted From Distraction By Distraction

The ant mill or death spiral evoking ideas of closed loops, reflects on how a collective can become trapped without realization, and how alternative voices can possibly illustrate alternative paths.

“Distracted from Distraction by Distraction, a collaboration with Jacob Mittermaier, stages an echo of a Death Spiral. Death spirals occur when army Ants, following a pheromone trail, end up in a closed loop and, literally and figuratively unable to see a way out, walk themselves to death. Mittermaier’s projection fading in and out of focus echoes the hundreds of Ant figures burnt into a wooden tondo in the form of an Ant mill or death spiral, atop which a line of tiny silver-cast Ants forge an alternate path, like the vanguard, separated from the masses, almost unseen. The repetition of media and press of multiplicity is evocative of the dizzying press of daily life within a Capitalist system. The death spiral phenomenon presents an alternative version of the lemming myth, an allegory, and a warning to evaluate our course from a cultural and ontological perspective and pay attention to alternative voices.”