‘After Babel..’ /’The Faiths of Others’
Faiths from around the world or equally likely from within a 1 mile radius, coming together in an audio installation at St. Luke’s Church in Liverpool.
Loudspeakers through which prayers are played, the speakers arranged in a circle, through which cuts a path…
Whether we are devout believers, agnostic or atheist, the religions of the world inform most aspects of our upbringing, education, system of values, moral code, our individual understanding of the world and attitude towards one another and other cultures.
Without necessarily being clearly aware of it, the faiths of others shape our world, our individual and collective world. We may move within an invisible net of influences – this is represented by the sound, in itself intangible, invisible yet of course a real entity (like god?) that leaves it’s residue and informs the space we inhabit (i.e. our daily lives as also the exhibition venue).
One reason why I am an artist is that I continue to cling to a possibly utopian unreasonable and improbable hope for humanity to find a neutral ground which it can inhabit with tolerance if not understanding and without dogmatism.
My vision of the world is that it’s success is determined by similar principles to those of great art work; a successful choreography, a well composed classical music score. So in this installation I take reference from Bach’s use of counterpoint and polyphony. Musical theories applied to the composition of his work, in which a variety of melodies are overlaid and form the audible beauty of his creations. Here the success is in the understanding that a number of individual melodies make up a complex whole. I would like the world to see itself like this, a complex composition, a chorus work, of many, many individual voices and melodies that can play in harmony, that are all required to make the world complete. Demonstrating this ideal with prayers of different faiths, who inhabit the exhibition space equally; these are my ‘vehicle’ to express what I wish people of all orientations, cultures and continents could arrive at.: An equally, harmonious, balanced symphony of individuals.
The second part of this installation is an evolving forest which will grow around the speaker installation for the duration of the show.
The forest grows day by day and is made on-site by the artist, during the exhibition timeframe. The audience can take this opportunity to reflect on the symbolism of forest, path and ladders, and the growing nature of the work as well as reflect on journeys in life they themselves undertook, wish they had done or are currently on. The presence of the artist is welcoming a dialogue with the audience, a dialogue about the content, artist’s motivations and inspirations of the work as well as the arts in general. It is specifically an opening of the mind that I wish can be achieved so my presence and continued practice during opening hours of the exhibition show my commitment to the work and my ideal.
There are a number of reasons to construct a forest and to construct it as a work in progress on site in the venue. For one it feels to me that the journey which we take through life develops, as life accumulates one experience after another. The multiple aspects of life can feel like a forest in which one can lose oneself or be lost. This symbolism of forest can also be read as one’s being lost an life and distant from purpose, destiny or faith, it can also symbolise the forests of our childhood folk and fairy tales, the imaginary places of mystic and magic that were out childhood dreams..
In life we always hope to ascend to reach heights.. From Babylonian times man has striven to reach the skies, to equal or rival divinity. So we continue to climb today still. Be it to reach goodness in life, be it in arrogance in the belief of our individual or collective supremacy (political for example), be it in the hope that things weill improve from bad to better or good to greater. We may seek godly blessing or love or status in society, the aim is always upwards, ascent. The ladder describes an unstable, unsecured journey, one the higher one reaches on, the more risky, the more treacherous the fall, a journey, also, that at it’s end may lead to nothing… or to the heavens… this is open to interpretation. The ladder is the most immediate vehicle to ascent and in the way that I use it I also think of it as signifying the growth of trees, I make the ladder the tree in a forest which is created throughout our lives.
The ladders will be constructed out of found wood sourced from skips and scrap yards, which will be further places of contact between the artist and an audience, where perhaps only thoughts will be exchanged or perhaps new understanding formed..
The main cost factor for this exhibition will be the acquisition of the loudspeakers. They should be reasonably large in size to give them presence in the exhibition space and to illustrate the presence of faith in the day to day running of the world..
