THE WALK OF THE OUROBOROS
PROJECT STAGE Developed design 2013
PROJECT ARCHITECT Charissa Snijders
PROJECT TEAM Charissa Snijders, Louise Marra, Basil Sharp and Meggan Young
This was a creative, exploratory project where we worked with the land and responded to it through drawing, writing and creating 12 dreaming places that separately and together bring the home and garden into ‘The walk of the Ouroboros’. Each dreaming place is symbolically and energetically linked to the whole and allows one to deepen their understanding of the eternal becoming; the life and death cycle. The walk acts as a catalyst in integrating this understanding into one’s life.
“For Maori every garden was dedicated to an Atua, either a local one or a more universal one. Also areas within gardens were also dedicated to Atua as they were places of specific rituals or practices, Atua were involved because the nature of the activities that were sacred and belonged to that space. Sometimes the physical representation of the atua was in the form of stones or carvings, some known as 'god sticks'.
This walk is dedicated to the Ouroboros, the ancient symbol of eternal becoming. The snake god. The eternal cycle of birth and death, the cycles within cycles of birth and death each year, each day, each breathe. Every breathe in is a new beginning, every breathe out a new death.
It is also a prayer walk, a form of labyrinth, to help centre, but to also celebrate and acknowledge the entities and beings, and sacredness of the spaces of the land we inhabit.
Each place is a 'dreaming' place, a place to inhabit more than what we see in our usual present. It is also a walk dedicated to my son Dylan, to all his love, energy and creativity in his short life.”
- Louise Marra -