PIPORNOT
(=Primus Inter Pares or NOT)
ABOUT US
Drawing by aricoco
www.aricoco.com
PIPORNOT is a project led by an interdisciplinary artist, aricoco. It is a collaborative exploration of temporary community-building through insect eusociality and biological altruism. Communicating with scientists who study insect’s social evolution and behavior, the concept of 'community' is examined by paralleling human society with insects’ non-hierarchical systems.
The visual presentation of this project has been threefold:
1) Hosting interactive workshops, where participants could engage in a visual (universal) way of communicating, gleaning information from the world of social insects that I collected for my own research, 2) Scientific lectures on eusociality, a phenomenon unique to the insect world, which details how the rules structuring a colony evolve and how it can apply to human communities. 3) A series of interactive performances in an immersive installation where participants will apply the rules to create self-organizing patterns.
About aricoco
aricoco is interested in how a community could form and function where there’s no central power to thrive. Exploring the non-hierarchical system of social insects (especially ants) and their biological altruistic characteristics within their female-dominated society, she attempts to acknowledge her paradoxical phobia for insects and challenge her own vulnerability as a human, drawing a parallel with the life of an insect. Through creating environments for habitation, sculptural garments/bags/masks that serve as her protective gear, and paintings of carnivorous plants that represent her desperate hope to alleviate my paradoxical fear of menacing insects, she disguises herself as an insect queen, performing a ritualistic play of surrendering her “powerless” body to the habitat.
For more information on aricoco, please visit: www.aricoco.com