The Lives of Animals │BOOKS
A Confluence of Snails, 2023
Literary synopsis
A Confluence of Snails is a novel in six stories where humans interact with snails and snails speak their minds. Each fictional story pushes beyond the edge of recent factual research found in the media and medical and conservation journals to consider the tension between the human desire to use snails as an extractive resource or simply letting a snail be a snail. At the center of the story, Snailnasium Inc. operates as a for-profit research facility and entertainment center where scientists experiment with snail introductions into human futures. In the earliest story, a student joins her science fair with a project demonstrating how to eat Rosy Wolf Snails to conserve endemic species. A couple then having difficulty conceiving a child enlists the help of a fertility snail hoping to exploit the biology of love darts. Snailnasium Inc. gets its full tour in the third story, until, in the fourth, a yearling snail outlines its class’s incorporation of radiation into its shell and hopes to return to the Bikini Atoll of its ancestors. Time passes into a future where the work at Snailnasium Inc. produces a way to implant snail DNA into humans as a corrective for homelessness. The final story consists of excerpts from the first conference of gastropods where species from around the world discuss their common predator, Homo sapiens.
Relation of the novel to the artist’s practice
The artist's novel is a component of David Colosi's exhibitions by the title Snaileidolia. The comprehensive project consists of an exhibition in Los Angeles at Council St., an exhibition in Brooklyn at Open Source, the artist's novel, a snail safari and a zoom with malacologists. The artist considers it within the larger context of his practice in Three-Dimensional Literature.
