Once, nearly all of the Western World believed something along these lines: the historical truth of the Babel story, the dispersal of the tribes, and the resultant birth of the modern nations and languages. During the 1600s, scores of books were written claiming that this or that nation was descended from the only righteous tribe. What is now very much a fringe ideology was widespread and taken very seriously, and is just beneath the surface of many contemporary beliefs and attitudes. It is part of the foundations of the binary framework so crucial to the operations of our culture, and is almost always expressed with very rigid black-and-white thinking:
"It is an existence that functions in darkness - not in light, in error - not in truth, in unrighteousness - not in righteousness, and in godlessness - not in godliness. The end result of this delusion is the absolute damnation and eternal ruin of its practitioner..." [taken from a post aptly called Babelology]
There is a raw persuasive power to this kind of logic. It's like the crocodile, unchanged and undiminished for millennia. Living here in the City, I fear and respect it.
Monday
Brick for Stone
i'm experimenting with new approaches to the problem of linking objects to networks of meaning and context. here, the clue to the puzzle is hidden in the shadow of the object. it's a reference to the Biblical Tower of Babel story, an important founding text or point of departure for much of my work. in the passage referenced, the builders of Babel are described as using "brick for stone". here we have a brick so worn by its time in the sea that it's taken on the shape of a stone. the Babel story has undergone a similar process; something that was once clearly man-made has become something (mis)taken for a natural, inevitable form. this story, so worn by time and in the telling, is one of thousands that make up the foundations of our culture.
Sunday
eisegetics institute: Lost Property or Belief Department
this 'poster' (never used) was for my installation in the storeroom at the Prague College studios. it's advertising the lost property dept. of the eisegetics institute, a space that playfully investigates (as usual) the relationship between art and language. this was the installation where i first started to use handmade signs to address the viewer.
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