AmyLavernia

“This is truly the first contemporary piece to make me stop in my tracks in surprise for a long time.”

Following a recent trip to London, I find myself with the itching need to blog again. So, to start, I will be reviewing my experience at the famous gallery Tate Modern.

I had to start off this series with the instillation work of Cildo Meireles’ “Babel” (2001), an astounding tower made of second-hand radios.  As the name suggests, the piece alludes to the biblical story of the “Tower of Babel”, in which mankind are punished by God for building a tower to the heavens, taking away the unity of language and their ability to understand one another. It is then said that mankind split to separate parts of the world and this is how the different languages originated.

As you walk to enter the room in which this installation is located, you can hear inconceivable faint whispering of noise, a noise that grows into a loud whirlwind of hypersensitive information as you enter the blue, dimly lit room. This is when the sense of an overpowering sublime and awe strike as you find yourself face to face with a tower of radios singing in a cacophonous mess. The lighting creates a cold, eerie atmosphere that further confronts the audience with a sense of celestial intimidation. The contrast with the calm, heavenly connotations of the blue light, the sheer size of the tower, and the noise makes the viewer completely engrossed and intimidated by the works, as if feeling the wrath of God. This is truly the first contemporary piece to make me stop in my tracks in surprise for a long time.

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The decision by Meireles to place these radio’s in order of age, would suggest a deliberate reflection of time, with the development of modernity and technology. When linking this with the allusion to the story of Babel, perhaps Meireles is confronting the audience with a warning, that we too are reaching for the heavens, and that we must face the consequences of this. The tower itself reflects aspiration, building upwards towards the sky; this creates an image of capitalism, further emphasising this tale that Meireles is telling of the modern Babel.

The theme of language is developed with the use of radios used to create a “tower of incomprehension”. The confusion of the noise reflects the communication of today’s western society, the vast information fed throughout humanity is inconceivable. In the story of Babel, the inability to communicate is, as described by the Tate , “the source of all mankind’s conflicts”, as the radio acts as a symbol of modern communication, predominantly with an emphasis on the media as a source of information, perhaps Meireles is suggesting that this is the source of conflict in the modern world.

Credits

Tate Modern

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