Giant ants traverse the field of Monte Alban. Their trails snake across the expansive land, scorched into the grass. In daylight the ancient ground seems to shimmer, vibrating with bodies the size of cut fingernails, carrying leaves three times that on their backs.

We wake up when it’s neither dark nor light. We walk the edges of a perimeter. We stand from the center of our body, only use the balls of our feet, the muscles in our jaw. We spent hours memorizing: the slope of this terrain, the shady side of the street, how to come together, to become opaque, to become translucent.

We found a pocket, then fit it to size, then furnished it. We never stopped moving as we nestled into it—first we called this pacing. Then we called it seeking. Then: leaning, lifting. Then: carrying. Lighting. Setting. Holding.

Late Bloomer Late Bloomer is a multidisciplinary project, begun three years ago by artists Ben Gould & Gabriella Lacza during their visits to Vienna, VA for Ben’s Tourette Syndrome-related treatments. This installment of Late Bloomer Late Bloomer explores an underlying mythos of the ant and myrmecochory, a strain of flowers whose seeds are carried and thereby germinated through ants’ travels. Along with a live iteration of Flower Dance at sunset and a prelude performed on the cello by Arthur Gould in the scale of Ben’s vocalizations, the garden will hold wax-coated, crocheted chest plates and flower torches made by the artists, as well as an arrangement of myrmecochorous flowers by Harris Bauer in response to movements seen in the performance.