Flash Mob, 2012

The protocol of this Flash Mob series consists of creating patterns on sketch paper with honey before putting it next to the same anthill over again.
It took several weeks before these especially big – nearly 1 cm long – and aggressive – sore bites and formic acid squirts – forest-dwelling ants decide to cooperate.
My first attemps turned out as bitter failures ; the anthill, apart from some venturous units, was totally not interested by my gifts.
After three or four days of reworking my patterns at fixed time the ants then began to come in droves, though in a messy and uncontrolled manner, agglutinating on the first honey stream and neglecting the rest of the pattern, all in a melee which sometimes resulted in fratricidal struggles.
After another week of daily offerings and my ants, who showed an undeniable sense of collective memory, diligently colonized my drawing book in battle array, to go in the same trend around the pattern thus revealed.