Produced in spring 2022, il Circo delle Lumache (Snail Circus) is a whimsical celebration of gastropods and their amazing abilities. A miniature circus installation doubles as a multisensory micro-museum to watch and learn about snails.
The experience is a provocation for us to slow down and enter into the very different sensory space of snail time. Culturally, snails are often viewed through the lens of utility as everything from a garden nuisance to a culinary delicacy. But they are also living beings, indigenous to lands throughout present-day Italy, with whom we have co-existed for centuries. By repositioning them as the protagonists of an extravagant miniature world, the Snail Circus invites us to convene with these creatures for a few moments, simply as fellow inhabitants on this earth.
The Snail Circus is also the only current physical post office for Snail Mail. Write to the snail protagonists from anywhere in the world and we’ll read your letter to them! You can write to an individual snail or the whole troupe. Stop by the in-person Snail Mail post office if you’d like to pick up a snail-sized envelope and paper. Send your Snail Mail to:
ChromaKairos Snail Mail
Via Roberto Bellarmino, 13
20141 Milano, MI
Italy
Read more on the ChromaKairos project webpage (in English / in italiano). You can also see more videos of the snails on the ChromaKairos Instagram.