The group Ouroboros takes its name from an alchemical symbol: a dragon that forms a perfect circle by holding its tail in its mouth. The symbol, according to the group, alludes to the structuralist tenet of the perfect autonomy of the signifier.

Pier Luigi Pieralli, the director of Ouroboros, created The Death of Geometry from a poem by Giuliano Scabia. The poem has the same relationship to the performance as it might have, for example, to a musical composition by Morton Feldman. The words are rendered “musical” by being stripped of any verbal value. Syllables are isolated, protracted and repeated; they proliferate other sounds (some of which are on tape) and the cumulative effect is rather meditative in a way that recalls Cage.