AnonyMouse, the collective that creates miniature stores for mice

Lady Gouda, Mouzart, Feta James, Amy Winemouse, Stilton John, Tailor Swiss… Ricotta Records is not a record store like the others. Located in the city of Lund in Sweden, you have to be very attentive to see it at the bend of a street. Humans are not the store’s target audience anyway, but rather the small rodents that roam our cities. Since 2016, a Swedish artist collective named AnonyMouse has been creating a parallel world for mice. After all, why shouldn’t they, too, be entitled to their pharmacies, wine bars, barbers or travel agencies?

More than 25 establishments for these small mammals have been set up in various European cities, such as Bayonne in France or on the Isle of Man. Each installation has been thought out down to the smallest detail, with more real-than-life settings. “NOTWe think that at some point most children like to imagine that there is a world parallel to ours in which small animals live like us but recycle things that we have lost ” , explains the collective to the My Modern Met platform. “So we try to incorporate as many human objects as possible.”

Regarding the record store, it took them more than a month of work but only a few minutes to set it up in the street at night. The instigators of the project never reveal the exact location of these small stores in order to keep passers-by as a surprise. Their identity is also kept secret. “We think part of the appeal of these facilities is that they could have been built by anyone.” According to them, attention must above all remain on the scenography and not on the creators.