Andrew S. Yang

James Jack: Thanks for taking time to talk with us about termites today. As both an artist and biologist we felt your perspectives would help us formulate why we are taking on the name of an insect most people loathe. We are thinking more about why termites might be a portal for collaborating with more than human species on the island of Shodoshima. As both of us came as artists in residence to the island in 2011 and 2012 we were searching for expanded ways of thinking about “residing” together with other species creatively.

Masashi Echigo: We chose termites as the name for our studio for a few reasons, first of which is they were everywhere around us while we were talking in the former somen noodle factory together about this project. We are also consciously thinking about turning something negative into something positive through community activities, inviting artists to inhabit the space and initiating open workshops together here in the future.

Andrew S. Yang: Termites (シロアリ) are like ants—they have the same system of forming very tight collective groups— but despite what their Japanese names suggests, they're not actually closely related to ants at all their social system emerged independently. As social insects they can only live in groups, but not just any group, they are family groups. For your project, as a metaphor, it is powerful; since termites not only live collectively, their survival depends on it. They also live with what we call endosymbionts (“inside living together”) which are microbes in their guts. No insect can actually eat wood on their own, but they have microbes that digest the wood inside their stomach for them.

Echigo: If they don't have microbes, they starve because they can't actually digest the wood themselves?

Yang: Yes, they live in this symbiosis with the microbes in their gut, just like microbes in the guts of cows allow them to digest the grass that they eat. And the social system among the termites in a nest is very robust because of how different termites take on different tasks, like ants. There are workers, “soldiers,” and a “queen.”

Jack: They have a division of labor?

Yang: That’s right—and different ones specialize in different kinds of work. The termites are pests in wooden homes, but I suppose one could create spaces for them— invite them in to take up residence in one place and so then avoid another place.

Jack: Hmmm, invite them in? We are thinking how to do this now….

Yang: or send them out, or choice. Termites play an important ecological role because they decompose material in forests and grasslands. They are helping process the wood and return it back to the earth.

Echigo: The nutrients are available for other creatures and plants, but if your house is built out of the same wood not so good of course.

Yang: A house is essentially a bunch of dead trees, they can't tell the difference. On an annual cycle they are definitely going to spread and find new places. Their new homes in an existing nest could probably last for decades, but that nest will eventually create new queens that will find new sites and make new homes. The termite queen lays tens of thousands of eggs a day.

Jack: Termite infested logs have a spiritual dimension as well, for example islands of Ryūkyū musician and activist Hideaki Gushiken taught me how they believe holes bore in wood by insects hold spirits of past generations within, so by bringing them into your house, you welcome in the ancestors too. He generously shared an elaborate piece of driftwood eaten by insects for an exhibition where we hosted the spirits of pīdama for months then returned them to him to include in home interior.

Yang: Termite-eaten wood often makes me think of Chinese scholar stones, rocks chosen because they represent a microcosm of a larger landscape, or even the universe itself.

Echigo: There are not so many young people and we see many abandoned houses, and it starts cropping. And I thought, I think this is very connected to this termites problem as well. I'll say, it’s for me it's a kind of a very symbolic icon, and also maybe that termites can be a kind of icon for me. It's this kind of local problem. So, I’m very happy to talk with you about this topic with you today.

Yang: So when you talk about it as a problem, it is because the termites are basically eating the houses right?

Echigo: Yeah.

Yang: And not just the old abandoned houses, but also the occupied houses? It's interesting, because depending on how you look at it, they also make their own architecture, Although I guess it is largely subtractive. Some termites in Africa make a more additive architecture—  rather than mainly excavating structures, they build quite large and complex towers in the landscape.

Jack: We have some pictures to share.

Jack: We don't really know what they're doing, but they're kind of considered to be a pest right? So like people get really annoyed and they’re all over the place. So what Echigo and I were talking about last year was like, let’s start to see them as more like cohabitants - friends. So, we’re thinking like taking something annoying and turning it into something cool you know. It’s gonna take a big turn because local people definitely do not - when you say Shiroari they not like woah. Because they’re everywhere right.

Min Seob Ji did an art work in this shed. So it’s an old, i think fishing shed and then it’s used for mikan for many years and then he put a bandage. He wrapped it up with gauze. To sort of save it. But basically it’s gotten super infested. The termites movements during the rainy season. This is like in May, June, which is apparently when they get really active. Inside of the wood they follow the grain. Is this a kind of mud or sawdust, i don’t know?

Yang : It’s probably a kind of processed wood from their own feces, a kind of spit. So are they building in materials besides wood, right?

Jack: Yeah. Maybe even cement someday.

Yang: And I suppose they must spray for the termites.

Jack: Not yet because its not in use, but interesting the termites tended to inhabit the second floor as the first floor was being used for occasional storage so there was human activity with doors opening and closing occasionally. What did you mean about the group activity—do they move in groups?

Yang: Termites are social insects, they form tightly-knit collective, cooperative groups—they are very similar to ants in this way, despite not being closely related to them. Termites don’t live in just any groups, they exist in family groups. At the same time,  they also live with endosymbionts—a whole different species, in this case a microbe, that lives inside of each termite.  No insect can usually eat wood, but termites have microbes in their guts that digest the wood for them. So they’re in this fully dependent, symbiotic relationship with the microbes inside them—if they don’t have the microbes, they starve, because the termites cannot actually digest the wood by themselves. In that way, termites are like  cows. Cows eat grass, but if you take away the microbes in the cow’s stomach they starve because the cows can't digest grass alone.

Jack: This is not directly related. But this is a super cool soy sauce crate. And it’s out of use. It’s like over a hundred years old. It’s old taru, with a for some of them you can see the bacteria dripping off.

Jack: they're just, stuffed

Yang: Wow, for anyone who works in architecture, there's a lot to work with where you are!

Jack: And then the bamboo, the binding part, but there's only one factory that can still make these yeah. In the past there were 100+ soy sauce factories on Shodoshima.
 
Yang: Look at that.

Jack: It's just living with Microbes. Sorry back to shiroari. This is another place waiting to become a studio.

Yang: Well, I mean that's what was impressive when I visited the Setouchi festival for the first time in 2010, all the ways that artists use these buildings and these materials. It's just amazing.

Jack: Yeah. This one, you know. As far as I could tell they were not termites.

Yang: It might depend on the kind of wood, from what I understand, the termites have preferences. Some kinds of wood are easier to eat than others, and certain kinds of processes, kinds of curing, can keep shiroari out. What you were showing me looks like it's just some kind of pine.

Jack: I think maybe they don't eat cedar/Hinoki. Yes here. They don’t like burnt wood. You know the Yakiita here. See like the. It’s used on buildings and it used to be used on boats. They say it’s for the ocean salt wind but also for insects. They like the kind of burnt you know. I mean, I think Echigo you're pretty sure they're in your house. I mean, they're definitely in my studio. They're living here.

Echigo: Yeah, actually, in May-June. They are also in the house. There's some. So we we could find a lot of yeah. and it be in my house. Yeah, we have it.

Yang: In terms of the wider ecosystem, termites play an important ecological role because they decomposers. If there’s dead wood in a forest, for example, they help process it and return it back to the earth. Then the nutrients are available to other creatures, including other plants. But of course, if you're building a house out of wood it is essentially a bunch of dead trees, and so an attractive place to live in.

Jack: Yeah. this is all super interesting. Yeah, we wanted to do a little benkyokai, you know. Just learn more about like, the way they move, the way they eat, the way they die. For example, the life cycle of a of a termite is is what, roughly speaking.

Yang: I think it depends on the species, and the climate, but  often the basic pattern is annual. So at least once, but maybe more times, a year there will be new males and new females that leave their home nests and mate. That is why fertile males and females have wings, so they can participate in a mating flight. Once mated, they will lose their wings and start a new nest— maybe in a fallen log, or maybe in a wooden house! In some species the queen, once she establishes a nest, actually doesn't move for the rest of her whole life. Her abdomen becomes so distended that she becomes immobile, filled with the thousands of eggs that she lays everyday for the rest of her life. The sterile “worker” termites feed the queen and tend to all of the eggs that she lays—so it is siblings rearing siblings. A worker might only live a number of months, but queens might live for many years.   

Jack: so depending on climate and region, and there's different, obviously different species of termites.

Yang: Yes, doing different things. Yours in Japan aren't like those in Africa, which built large towers out in the savannah. Your’s are burrowing into wood, so others actually farm fungi as a food source. It just depends where you are in the world and what species you have. In Japan. I think the Japanese Termite and the Formosan Termite are the major species across Japan/Taiwan Archipelago.

Jack: Yamato termites and yellow termites.

Jack: Anyway, I don't know just thinking about new technology and old.

Yang: Interesting.

Jack: Echigo. What do you think of this, too? I don't know much about the architecture, but

Echigo: I am also very interested how termites create these forms in the wood. So to maybe their past or house maybe. I’m very interested in how we could see their house in the wooden beams.

Yang: That’s a good question. There has been some research into African termite mounds and how their designs regulate heat and ventilation, and then using those principles to create human architectural designs, such as the Eastgate Building in Harare, Zimbabwe. Some of that research involves X-raying a structure, but also cutting it into cross-sections.

Echigo: Great, fantastic.

Yang: Many of these tunnels or things that you showed me that were on the outside. They’re almost extensions of the wood but they're probably made from processed wood like spit or feces of the termite. They make their own kind of cement, or many or something like clay.

Jack: Wow clay! Now that you mentioned Ryukyu, I'm remembering infested wood being repurposed as a spirit home whereby the hole shaped wood can be reused in a new house. An ancestral carrier for spirits. A friend I collaborated with, Hideaki Gushiken, an Okinawan musician taught me this was because they believe the insects hold spirits of the of the past generations. So after they have eaten part of the wood, spirits are welcomed into the house.

Yang: Wow, I have never heard of that, fascinating. The excavations of termites in wood often make me think of Chinese scholar stones. The patterns the termites create do evoke the cosmic.

Echigo: Toyama is more like lots of snow so it’s not a good environment for the termites. So actually in my parents’ house I have never seen termites. So maybe in Japan, termites live in more tropical areas.

Yang: Yeah, it's the same in the US. In North Carolina, where I lived for a while,  termites are a real problem, but l here in Massachusetts, almost no one has termites. They are generally a tropical or a sub-tropical insect.

Jack: So they don't like freezing temperatures?

Yang: Maybe they don't like the temperatures, and also the humidity.  High levels of moisture and heat are helpful in decomposing wood, and the termites need high moisture environments to survive. And as cold-blooded creatures, termites can be more active when the temperatures are higher.

Jack: Humidity. Can you say a little more about that? They need warmth?

Yang: What's interesting about termites is that they don't have a very strong outside cuticle, and so they can dry out very easily. That is one benefit of living underground or in a piece of wood, you can stay out of the sun in a closed environment. They also need that for their offspring.

Echigo: They're interesting.

Jack: Super interesting. And we're also thinking also about the social stigmatism humans ascribe to insects but also to those who associate with them. As an artist who studies insects, what kind of reactions have you encountered?

Yang: In the United States, when you’re interested in insects, it’s still largely seen as “childish” —something that interests children, kind of the way dinosaurs in popular culture. I get the sense that there are more people with a general interest in insects in Japan than in the United States. Kids are allowed to be interested in insects as a matter of curiosity, and adults fixate on the beauty of butterflies, but every other insect is generally considered with a kind of disgust.  In the US, an adult interested in insects is either someone who works in pest control, or an eccentric weirdo.

In Japan, I think you have more of a culture actually of people being interested in insects as a hobby, with people rearing or collecting expensive beetles and the like. That can raise its own issues in terms of harming biodiversity, but overall I think it reflects a very different cultural attitude than that which exists in the U.S. and Europe towards insects.

Jack: There was an exhibit here in Kanda where I ate insects once but that’s the only time. The artist was making like chocolate grasshoppers and i think. Even Gokiburi, cockroaches. Like fried gokiburi I think.

Yang: There are a number of artists who make use of insects, often though just a material, as Damian Hirst does with thousands of butterfly wings.  My friend Brandon Ballengée does this project that is a sort of “love motel” for insects— it glows brightly at night attracting moths to gather.  But other artists have done similar things as well. I've taught an insect class at an art school for years, and it's the most popular class I teach. But students come to really love insects once they actually have a chance to interact with them, collect them themselves, and look at them closely.

Jack: Sunset House was also full of termites when we arrived in 2010. The floor was completely penetrated, so that your feet would go, pass through the wood like sponges. The pillars too a little bit but for some reason they really went after the floor they seem to like perhaps due to the humidity as you mentioned. The building, the roof and the the walls were standing ok. We are thinking of termites as a a metaphor for residencies here. Work with what’s available, you know lot of things you mentioned too like, collectivity, working with things that are here already you know.

Yang: That makes a lot of sense. Certainly the termites are working with what is available to them—the wood that humans have brought and placed in the form of houses, many now abandoned. As a collective, the termites are working together cooperatively to make something new from what has been left behind. They both use the the material as substance, but also as a habitat and domicile, creating their own.