Description:

This publication assembles three phases of Termite Economies, a major series of artworks produced between 2018 – 2020 by the Australian artist Nicholas Mangan. Termite Economies grappled with the potentiality of collective social behavior and complexities of systematic exploitation of non-human intelligence. The book presents each phase in the order of the exhibition series. It includes process and research photographs, diagrams, installation and detailed imagery. It includes an essay by Artist Mariana Silva, a fictional text by writer ST.Lore, a conversation between Mangan and cultural theorist Ana Teixeira Pinto, and a republished essay by Dr. Guy Theraulaz. The publication itself is designed to resemble an imaginary mining corporation field-research report, comprised of loosely bound sections and inserted into high-vis coloured PVC sleeve and borrowing heavily from scientific research report aesthetics.