In Simon Starling’s Autoxylopyrocycloboros (2006), a small wooden steamboat sails on Loch Long, Scotland. This twenty-foot-long wooden ship is named Dignity, and it is chopped to pieces by axe-wielding passengers who feed these chunks to the ship’s own engine’s boiler. A metaphor for Ouroboros, the tail-devouring snake, the boat predictably struggles to sail since it must consume itself to maintain this journey. In the final moments of the seven-minute projection piece, it inevitably sinks to the bottom of the Loch. As viewers, we must watch uncomfortably as pieces of Dignity rise from the depths to float on the surface of the water, and the passengers swim to the shore to find solid ground and safety.

Continue reading:

ACSA Members
Non-members