Ouroboros

Ouroboros is a series of six works created during a two-week residency at the previously abandoned Teatrihoov theatre in Viljandi, Estonia. The series is titled after the ancient symbol of a snake eating its own tail in an infinite cycle of self-destruction and renewal; a symbol that captures my own navigation of neurodiverse sensory overload, masking, and burnout. Masking sensory overwhelm, perpetuated by exposure to a constant stream of digital information, is a never-ending chameleon behaviour that leads me into a continual forming and reforming of the ‘self’; monitoring and restricting my body, speech, and emotions to conform to social expectations.

Ouroboros, combines bodily movement, the fluidity of digital images, and embodied spatial installation to consider, through a neurodiverse lens, the contemporary sensorial experience of being grounded in a physical body while increasingly connected to nebular digital spaces. My figure, isolated and coded to bounce like a screensaver, is projected onto mirror acetate. Its reflected form warps between figuration and abstraction in tendrils and elastic expansions whose slow revolutions create a meditative, atemporal atmosphere. These slippages of my body’s identity are a direct result of its interaction with the invisible structures of the mirror surface and the architectural elements of the space itself.

Ouroboros - Full Installation

Every new installation of these works creates a variation in the piece, through the change in position of the projector and acetate, the randomization of the movement of the image coded in Processing, and the specificity of the site’s architecture. Below is photo documentation of the works initial installations in Estonia, where I projected in multiple locations in an old theatre; each offering its unique transformations and interactions.