CINETECA MADRID
Expanded in RIZOMA Festival
19-24.11.2024
From Ouroboros to the current loop
The exhibition ‘From Ouroboros to the current loop’ arises from the symbolism of *Ouroboros*, the central theme of the RIZOMA 2024 festival, where the serpent devouring its own tail represents an eternal cycle of creation, destruction and rebirth. This archetype of continuity appears in cultures as disparate as Norse mythology, Hinduism and Mesoamerican civilisations, becoming a universal emblem of the cyclical flow of life. In alchemy, it represents the unity of the elements and the constant change of form: nothing disappears, only transforms. This eternal cycle of life and regeneration inspires and is reflected in each work of this audiovisual exhibition.
The exhibition brings together audiovisual pieces that explore repetition as both a narrative and philosophical resource, in a dialogue between time, memory and nature. Curated by Loops.Expanded in collaboration with PROYECTOR for the RIZOMA Festival, the exhibition unfolds as a set of spiralling narratives that invite the viewer to reflect on the cyclical meaning of existence and the role of the individual in the vast landscape of human experience. The works by Anna Gimein, Ilaria di Carlo, Javier Olivera and Lukas Marxt offer unique perspectives on how the loop can reveal the hidden layers of our perception.
Gilles Deleuze explores in ‘Diferença e Repetição’ (1968) the idea that repetition is a form of differing: ‘One does not repeat the identical, but that which always changes in its becoming’.
In de la O, Anna Gimein plays with the ambivalence of the word ‘idle’, exploring its gender connotation and the boundary between stillness and madness. Through repetitive movement, her installation questions self-control and self-perception, as a visual reflection of the Ouroboros: a perpetually rotating figure that reminds us how old concepts of femininity are continually renewed, ‘going mad’ in an infinite self-exploration. As the artist points out, the twist in the piece evokes the struggle between discipline and its loss, alluding to the cycle of mastery and liberation posed by the Ouroboros.
Ilaria di Carlo, in The Divine Way, invites us on a descent inspired by Dante’s *Divine Comedy*, where a protagonist traverses an endless labyrinth of stairs. This journey evokes a visual narrative in which the spaces change and the immersion into the ‘underworld’ acts as an introspective cycle, a continuous descent that explores the search for identity and self-discovery. In the words of Nietzsche, ‘If you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you’. This piece reflects the cycle of death and rebirth in a metaphorical way, involving the viewer in a constant process of transformation.
In A possible portrait of my mother, Javier Olivera explores the nature of affection and memory. Through archival images and Super 8 films, he uses the loop as a resource that, like a mantra, evokes intimacy and the desire to preserve the past. This affective loop, an incessant repetition of memories, reflects the cycle of Ouroboros, where nostalgia becomes an act of continuous creation. The repetition of a single musical note throughout the piece enhances this trance-like atmosphere, suggesting that memory itself is an ‘infinite loop’, a spiral that never dies out, but is endlessly transformed.
Lukas Marxt presents in Circular Inscription and Reign of Silence two pieces that pay homage to the Land Art of the sixties and seventies, with a minimalist aesthetic that refers to iconic works such as Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. In Circular Inscription, a car spirals across the dry Lake El Mirage, while Reign of Silence shows the movement of a motorboat on a lonely lake, leaving an ephemeral wake. Both works highlight the relationship between humans and the natural environment and explore the notion of permanence versus the temporal. As in Ouroboros, the circles and spirals left by human intervention in the landscape eventually fade away, recalling the ‘temporal imprint’ that each being leaves in the universal cycle.
The looping structure of these works is, in turn, an echo of the evolution of cinema in a cycle of ‘death and rebirth’: from the advent of sound and digital cinema to the age of algorithms, the medium has survived, adapting to new demands and redefining its identity. Today, cinema seems locked in its own Ouroboros, in a continuous process of self-reference and transformation, where ‘the end is the beginning’. As Heraclitus stated, ‘Nothing is permanent except change’. In this cycle of creation and dissolution, ‘From Ouroboros to the current loop’ offers a visual and philosophical reflection on temporality, perception and the perpetual reinvention of art and life.
