Abstract
Over the last 400 million years insects have evolved in symbiosis with plants and animals acquiring a diversity of shapes, colours, developmental strategies, and behaviours that inspire and shape human and non-human life. Insects exhibit advanced movements, behaviours, and interactions: they walk, crawl, run, jump, vibrate, fly, and metamorphose, creating intricate movement choreographies. However, in a time of climate crisis and due to human activities, many insects are undergoing fast rate of decline. The research project Insectography began to germinate as a way of relating to this critical situation. Insectography is an entanglement of “insects” and “choreography”. In the Insectography project, we created an explorative workshop practice consisting of insectographic tasks. Engaging with biology, choreography, indigenous, and post-human theories, and performative inquiry, we allowed insectographic processes to emerge as a way of strengthening human and other-than-human connections and empathy. In this chapter we explore the insectographic process as a possibility to extend ideas of choreography as a way of crafting. We emphasise this crafting as a two-way-process between humans and other-than-humans in a more-than-human world. Insectography is an entanglement of “insects” and “choreography”. Through exchanging “choreo”—meaning dance—with “insecto”, we take part in the ongoing critique (Forsythe, n.d.; Klien, 2008; Leon, 2020; Lepecki, 2006, 2010) that the dancing human body is essential for the act of choreography. Instead, we participate in expanded choreography, and biology, post-human theories and performative inquiry to allow insectographic processes to emerge. Together, the four authors have backgrounds as choreographers, insect chemosensory biologists, researchers, and educators. In this study we are joined by bumblebees [Bombus spp.], little transformer beetles from Ecuador [Carcinobaena pilula], and Kung Fu Mantis [Callibia diana]. The research questions we ask in this project are: (1) How might insects choreograph us? (2) How might choreographic tasks make humans engage with insects? We concretely explore these questions through a series of workshops. The first workshop we engaged with provided the research material for this chapter.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Fluid City (2012–2014), https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/creative/our-research/urn/transforming-cities/fluid-city.html.
- 2.
SPACE ME/Inclusive Dance Company (2012), https://www.dance-company.no/space-me-2012.
- 3.
200 BILLION AND ONE/Inclusive Dance Company (2016), https://www.dance-company.no/200-milliarder-og-1.
- 4.
Provocation delivered by Antje Hildebrant at Cue Positions Symposium at Chisenhale Dance Space November 23rd, 2013, https://vimeo.com/80257439.
- 5.
We have used photos with copyright restrictions that allow the photos to be downloaded and used freely. However, the photographers should be credited.
References
Arlander, A. (2018). Multiple futures of performance as research? In A. Arlander, B. Barton, M. Dreyer-Lude, & B. Spatz (Eds), Performance as research knowledge, methods, impact (pp. 333–349). Routledge.
Bolt, B. (2016). Artistic research: A performative paradigm? Parse: Repetitions and Reneges (3), 129–142.
Braidotti, R. (2002). Matamorphosis. Toward a materialist theory of becoming. Polity Press.
Bru-Dominguez, E. (2019). Becoming insect: The parasite in ‘Memòries d'una puça’ by Sol Picó. Journal of Catalan Studies, 1(Special Issue), 1–12.
Chittka, L. (2004). Dances as windows into insect perception. PLOS Biology, 2(7), e216. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020216
Dupuis, C. (2020). Dance curation as choreographic practice. Dance Articulated, Special Issue: Choreography Now, 6(1), 89–110.
Engel, M. S. (2015). Insect evolution. Current Biology, 25(19), R868–R872. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.07.059
Elwood, R. W. (2016). Might insects experience pain? Animal Sentience, 9(18), 1–4.
Evans, E. P. (1906). The criminal prosecution and capital punishment of animals. W. Heinemann.
Fels, L. (2015). Performative inquiry: Releasing regret. In S. Schonmann (Ed.), International yearbook for research in arts education (pp. 477–481). Waxmann.
Ferreira, H. (2015). Book review of Braidotti, R. (2002). Metamorphoses: Towards a materialist theory of becoming. Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais, 3(1), 399–403.
Forsythe, W. (n.d.). Choreographic objects. http://www.williamforsythe.de/essay.html
Gillott, C. (1995). Insects and humans. In C. Gillott (Ed.), Entomology (pp. 691–744). Springer.
Hallmann, C. A., Sorg, M., Jongejans, E., Siepel, H., Hofland, N., Schwan, H., Stenmans, W., Müller, A., Sumser, H., Hörren, T., Goulson, D., & de Kroon, H. (2017). More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas. PLOS ONE, 12(10). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185809
Haseman, B.C. (2006). A manifesto for performative research. Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy: Quarterly Journal of Media Research and Resources, 118, 98–106.
Hildebrand, J. G., & Shepherd, G. M. (1997). Mechanisms of olfactory discrimination: Converging evidence for common principles across phyla. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 20(1), 595–631. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.20.1.595
Hildebrandt, A. (2013). The end of choreography. Accessed on April 4, 2017. https://vimeo.com/80257439
Klein, C., & Barron, A. B. (2016). Insects have the capacity for subjective experience. Animal Sentience, 1(9), 1–19.
Klien, M. (2008). Choreography as an aesthetics of change (Doctoral thesis). Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh.
Leon, A. (2020). Between and within choreographies. An early choreographic object by William Forsythe. Dance Articulated, Special Issue: Choreography Now, 6(1), 64–88.
Lepecki, A. (2006). Exhausting dance. Performance and the politics of movement. Routledge.
Lepecki, A. (2010). Zones of resonance: Mutual formations in dance and the visual arts since the 1960s. In S. Rosenthal (Ed.), Move choreographing you: Art and dance since the 1960s (pp. 152–164). Hayward Publishing.
Monni, K. (2018). Situaatio, kehollisuus ja kielellisyys. Merkintöjä modernin jälkeisestä koreografiasta 1980-luvulta tähän päivään [Situatedness, embodiment and language. Comments on postmodern dance from the 1980s until today]. In N. Hallikainen & L. Pentti (Eds.), Postmoderni tanssi Suimessa? [Postmodern dance in Finland?] (pp. 77–108). University of the Arts Helsinki.
Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435–450.
Østern, T. P. (2018). Choreographic-pedagogical entanglements. In S. Styve Holte, A.-C. Kongsness, & V. M. Sortland (Eds.), Choreography 2018 (pp. 24–30). Kolofon.
Østern, T. P., Jusslin, S., Nødtvedt Knudsen, K., Maapalo, P., & Bjørkøy, I. (2021). A performative paradigm for post-qualitative inquiry. Qualitative Research, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941211027444
Simonson, A. (2021). Att synliggöra marginaliteten äldre kvinnor i dekonstruktion av samtida dansdiskurser med dekoloniserande metodologi: ett konstnärligt, didaktiskt och koreografiskt projekt [Making elderly women as marginalized group visible through deconstruction of contemporary dance discourses through decolonializing methodologies: An artistic, pedagogical and chorographic project] (Master thesis). Stockholm University of the Arts.
Smith, E. H., & Kennedy, G. G. (2009). History of entomology. In V. H. Resh & R. T. Cardé (Eds.), Encyclopedia of insects (2nd ed., pp. 449–458). Academic Press.
Stork, N. (2018). How many species of insects and other terrestrial arthropods are there on earth? Annual Review of Entomology, 63, 31–45. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-ento-020117-043348
Tye, M. (2016). Are insects sentient? Animal Sentience, 9(5), 1–3. https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1134&context=animsent
Wilcox, L. (2017). Drones, swarms and becoming-insect: Feminist utopias and posthuman politics. Feminist Review, 116(1), 25–45.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Østern, T.P., Martin, R., Bichão, H., Pettersen, A.S. (2022). Insectography: A Choreographic Crafting of Insects and Us. In: Fredriksen, B.C., Groth, C. (eds) Expanding Environmental Awareness in Education Through the Arts. Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education, vol 33. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4855-8_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4855-8_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-19-4854-1
Online ISBN: 978-981-19-4855-8
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)