Dark Tears of Babylon

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In Search of a Common Language

 

“And through the clouds of dirt and smoke and dust / I see how they build the Tower of Babel.”

 

“Dark Tears of Babylon,” a loose collective from Bern, produces images that combine materials such as adhesive tape and smoke. The resulting images appear monochrome and exhibit diverse styles. A pervasive and overarching monochrome in the images, at least at first glance, establishes a common visual language. Simultaneously, the group also operates in the performative field.

 

Based on conversations that took place during an intercultural festival in 2019 called “Babylon Bern,” a search for a common “root” was initiated. In this process, a mental image from the Old Testament emerged, bearing the name “Tower of Babel.” Many stories and even more interpretations surround the “Tower of Babel.” That the loss of a language of mutual understanding has painful consequences is something we are reminded of daily in the present day. The "Tower of Babel" evokes a failed and abandoned construction site, littered with rubble and soot. Whether anything can be learned from this failure, as Jürgen Habermas's "Round Table" from the 1980s suggests, is not addressed by the group "Dark Tears of Babylon." Their primary focus is on playing with materials and deposits on a "Round Table" as if in a dream: "The Tower of Babel is but a dream, intangible.

 

I and the nightingale are truly real," says the little white donkey.

 

These two quotations are taken from the poem "Iron Dream" by the Yiddish poet Kadye Molodovski, published in 1965 in the collection "Likht fun Dornboym."

 

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