A. Vulgaris

A. Vulgaris is an ongoing video-installation and writing project that looks to slugs in order to unsettle human cultural perceptions around survival, queerness, immigration (invasiveness), productivity, and belonging.

Arion Vulgaris is the name created to distinguish a relatively new, so-called invasive, slug species currently making its way across Europe due to international trade. Although the word “vulgar” has come to mean offensive or crude, its original Latin (and scientific) meaning is “common” or “of the people.” This project arose as the conglomeration of several experiences with slugs and people’s reactions to them: first, when teaching non-binary children in the Chicago Parks District, where slugs became role models for non-binary living; then later in Salzburg, Austria, where Arion Vulgaris is well established with passive distain, and in Vilnius, Lithuania, where it has only recently appeared and is stirring up trouble as the “killer slug.”