2021 Year 3221: rare, left-handed* versions of the common garden snail have evolved. With a shell of 20cm diameter, these snails are 10x the size of their ancestors. However, rather than fierce predators, their size renders them easy targets. 10x larger, they also move 10x slower. So slow, in fact, that they travel backwards. Not only through space, but also time. Unlike the snails we are familiar with in 2021, these snails can hear, but - unhelpfully for them - mostly in reverse. Travelling backwards in time, these unlucky Gastropods become extinct in the year 3118. Today their fossilised shells contain the sounds of the century through which they lived, and the millennium following their extinction.
*A left-handed / sinistral snail shell spirals anticlockwise and opens to the left. Today (2021), 1 in 1 million snails are “left-handed”
Part of A Map to Maybe (ongoing) body of work, exploring possible futures. Recently shown at KHB Studios in Berlin.
Ceramic, glaze, MP3 players, repurposed headphone speakers, audio, text.
Nancy Dewhurst 