Requiem for the Insects

An acoustic-olfactory composition for the Whitney Biennale 2026

“If the insects go, our glass roof will crack above us.” - om

This acoustic-olfactory composition emerges from the tensions in the relationship between humans and insects, where the forces of cultivation and destructiveness are increasingly unbalanced. On the one hand insects are essential and beneficial; they pollinate the crops we depend on. On the other hand, insects are seen as a destructive pest and we go to great lengths to exterminate them. But we are reaching breaking point. Our very survival hinges on the balance of these vital forces.

About 80% of the living species on our planet are insects, and without them our planet will cease to

function but we are eliminating them at an exponential rate. As early as 60 years ago, in Silent Spring, Rachel Carson warned of the catastrophic effects of excessive pesticide use. Today, insect populations have been decimated - an absence that I found painfully audible when recording in monoculture zones.

In the work of the great biologist Edward O. Wilson the magnitude of this loss becomes clear: we are

dismantling the very foundation of ecosystems. One need only glance at reports like the Insect

Atlas (boell.de) to witness the collapse of insect biodiversity across Europe.

At the other extreme, we read of insect “invasions” - species arriving from elsewhere, occupying the

voids left by our actions, perhaps displaced by the very forces that are destroying them - yet they are

labelled as threats.

The glass is already beginning to crack.

It is in this tension that the work finds its voice, rooted in the inevitable consequence:

"If the insects go, our glass roof will crack above us." - om

With thanks to NELIXIA