PAST EVENT: This was part of the EAF25 programme.

What can we learn from ants about the diversity of life and the history of Indigenous peoples on the planet? There is no movement without memory.

Created by trans-Indigenous performance artist and biologist UÝRA, Espiral da Morte was a performance that interwove biological communication and Indigenous memory in Brazil, through the creation of two interconnected spirals. 

Activating Más Arte Más Acción’s Around a Tree roundtable installation at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, the performance used natural materials to enact the Espiral da Morte, or death spiral: a phenomenon where scent trails are disrupted, cutting off a chain of natural memory amongst the insects. Constructing these interlocking spirals, UÝRA draws a parallel between this natural memory of ants, and the embattled memory of Indigenous peoples in diaspora in Brazil.

Ants communicate through scent. Indigenous peoples navigate by oral memory. Through this coordinated, intimate connection with the knowledge of ancestors, both groups continue. Interruptions in these cycles bring disorder, disorientation, and death. Disconnected and isolated, ants and Indigenous people alike are scattered, lost from their collectives paths. 

Espiral da Morte formed part of EAF25’s programme inspired by the themes of Más Arte Más Acción’s Around a Tree installation. The permanent roundtable commission at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh encourages communal conversation around the climate crisis and reconnection to the natural world.

Related Programme

See more related events and exhibitions:
→ Más Arte Más Acción: Around a Tree at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, New Town + North
→ Decolonising the Outdoors: diaspora / sunago at EAF Pavilion, New Town + North