E L E N A   R O S S I

HOW LONG DO YOU TAKE?

OR

DANCING PERFORMANCE ON A DEAD SNAIL

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I have six big boxes of textile fragments.

I took a thread from the weft of a fabric I used to make an opera costume.

 

Yes, I bite my nails (but I never bite my snail)

 

Silk comes from the larva of Bombyx mori (latin: 'silkworm of the mulberry tree'), an economically important insect, being a primary producer of silk. Domestic silk moths are closely dependent on humans for reproduction, as a result of millennia of selective breeding. If the animal is allowed to survive after spinning its cocoon and through the pupal phase of its lifecycle, it releases proteolytic enzymes to make a hole in the cocoon so it can emerge as an adult moth. These enzymes are destructive to the silk and can cause the silk fibers to break down from over a mile in length to segments of random length, which seriously reduced the value of the silk threads but not silk cocoons used as 'stuffing' available in China and elsewhere for doonas, jackets etc. To prevent this, silkworm cocoons are boiled. The heat kills the silkworms and the water makes the cocoons easier to unravel.

Often, the silkworm itself is eaten.

 

I could break it

I'm strong

I'm powerful

 

I get nervous

 

Snails constructe their own shell (periostracum, a thin organic coating) from complex proteins secreted by theirs mantle, called conchiolin (or conchin). These proteins, together with others macromolecules, mainly polysaccharides, form a matrix which constitutes the environment where aragonite crystals can grow and give to the shell its stiffness.

 

Would you wear it?

There are dead animal parts inside it

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Are you able to make your own shell?