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You and I, wandering on the snake’s tail

Thilo Frank

Lichtstadt Feldkirch2018 Thilo Frank Wandering on the snake's tail
Lichtstadt Feldkirch Impressionen Festival 2018
Lichtstadt Feldkirch2018 Thilo Frank Wandering on the snake's tail
Lichtstadt Feldkirch Impressionen Festival 2018

“You and I, Wandering on the Snake’s Tail” is the name of the installation in the Reichenfeld by German artist Thilo Frank. Forty-four wooden triangles are lined up in a circular form with a diameter of 10 m and a height of 3.50 m and a constantly slightly shifting construction, until the circle closes. This created a kind of pavilion that invites you to enter, stroll inside and walk around. An architecture that leaves everything open and at the same time encompasses it; that, viewed from inside, splits the outside world into fragments which seem to move within the tightly screwed-together construction, so that the whole structure tilts inexorably. The installation occupies the place, allows us to see new things in the familiar and activates our temporal perception in the constant play of light – by day as by night, when an internal light source creates a completely new, completely different spatial situation. The interplay of rhythm, movement and myth finds its climax in the title of the work: we wander on the tail of the snake, which at the end is swallowed by the beginning. The symbol of the uroborus (literally, “tail-devouring”) already appears in the earliest known image, a shrine surrounding the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun, and symbolizes cosmic unity. In numerous subsequent mythical, religious, alchemical and philosophical manifestations, the uroborus also is a symbol of infinity, representing an eternal circular process and permanent cyclical regeneration.