In 1978 I started physically intervening with a book called ‘The Ways of Insects.’ I renamed the publication ‘Book of Sad + Elusive.’ I was intrigued by the astonishing range of relationships, often triggered by chemical reactions, which the book described in minute detail.

I based several performances on these investigations, aware of how our own chemical messengers govern us. ‘Paussus’ looked at the terrifying scenario in the inter-relationship of a small beetle and its ant hosts. The beetles secrete a volatile substance from subcutaneous glands that is greedily licked up by the ants, appeasing them and suppressing their usual aggression toward intruders. By imbibing this chemical, the ants can enter such a seemingly ecstatic state that they can be torn apart by the beetle whilst still submitting themselves to it.

Anne Bean takes sensual delight in a grotesque, Cronenbergian body horror. In her (1981) short film Paussus, the artist explores a becoming-beetle, secreting a dark, viscous fluid from her mouth in extreme close-up, wiggling her blackened tongue and smearing the pitch about her face to a voiceover calmly explaining the lifecycle of the eponymous insect. The creature enjoys a relationship at once symbiotic and parasitic with the ant kingdom, ingratiating itself into their nexts and drugging them with a secretion that leaves them delirious but vulnerable, “inducing the greatest ecstasy while doing the greatest harm possible.” I know the feeling. A sickly, visceral delight.  
The Quietus
Afraid Of The Dark: Horror At Somerset House
Robert Barry , December 10th, 2022

……performance artist Anne Bean’s video installation ‘Paussus’ is a genuinely
unsettling 2 mins and 59 seconds that has to be seen for yourself.
The Nudge
Sabina Culver 01/11/22