Phantasmagoric:: Ouroborus
Phantasmagoric :: Ouroborus (2026) is a new media live performance created and exhibited by Ava Mirage Wanbli. A licensed phlebotomist draws 80 milliliters of Wanbli’s blood, foregrounding the trans body’s entanglement with the medical system, reuniting the body, and the process of becoming anew. This is both a site of survival and regulation. Accompanying this gesture, a video projection of deified versions of Wanbli speak on looking to new realities in acts of defiance by reminding the audience of their own power collectively.
She sits on a 3D sculpture altar that connects to objects used in the animation video. In a gesture of self renewal and processing of grief, the blood that was drawn is then poured over Wanbli’s body as a ritual of connecting herself after experiences of near death, trauma, fear and moments of dissociation.
During this the 3D animation depicts a mythology of recreated versions of herself speaking on how we process decisions to find a better world through self renewal and desires for intimate reconnection. At the end of the ritual Wanbli hands a video game controller to a volunteering audience participant. They then pilot her virtual avatar through a self-created digital “afterlife”. The audience shifts from witness to participant in reconstitution. Finally, Wanbli stands in the projection as a physical body washing away the blood with water.
. Phantasmagoric :: Ouroborus is an artwork and ritual for self reclamation. A ritual to reunite dissociated bodies and refuse division as a transgender person and how collective care is important as people.
The mirror can present new worlds
Focal points of recognition
Breaking systems as opportunity
We see through the veil
The density of our breath
Speaking resonance
Spit Shifting Ouroborouses
lips tasting wet palimpests
Consumers now consumed
A Mirage was Born from your Heat Rising
We returned to the ether
i lived for this, I died for this
you have so much power
All of us were fool to believe otherwise
your pleasure kept me alive
You held me and i say thank you
Thank you Thank you for holding me
I desire in voice
Heat from a star
Rising up to create an image
i am strong enough to now begin
I am now calling
A message
Do we make a world in the images as once was
or we take a risk and create one we have never seen before?
Focal points of recognition
Breaking systems as opportunity
We see through the veil
The density of our breath
Speaking resonance
Spit Shifting Ouroborouses
lips tasting wet palimpests
Consumers now consumed
A Mirage was Born from your Heat Rising
We returned to the ether
i lived for this, I died for this
you have so much power
All of us were fool to believe otherwise
your pleasure kept me alive
You held me and i say thank you
Thank you Thank you for holding me
I desire in voice
Heat from a star
Rising up to create an image
i am strong enough to now begin
I am now calling
A message
Do we make a world in the images as once was
or we take a risk and create one we have never seen before?
