Burn! Babylon
Kyiv, Platforma Art Factory, 2016
Lukasz Surowiec, Boris Mikhailov, AES+F, Orthodogs, Adamina Schneider, Julia Beliaeva, Danylo Halkin, Jan Bačynsjkyi, Florine Leony, Sylvan Baumann, Yuriy Sivirin, Andriy Siguntsov, Vitaliy Makoviy, Natalia Korotyaeva, Serhiy Panasenko, Dmytro Kavsan, Victor Sydorenko
In contemporary popular culture, Babylon has become a symbol of the Western societal system aiming to dominate the rest of the world. As Bob Marley sang: 'Rebel, rebel! The Babylon system is the vampire!'
Europe is facing the consequences of a centuries-old monopoly. Neo-colonialist policies, adopted by most Western countries in one way or another, affect every part of the world. Due to the self-proclaimed 'superiority' of the old world, the dialogue exists only in the speeches and promices of those who hold the power. To explore the manifestations of modern ideologies, we have invented various absurdist social concepts that parody themselves. These concepts call for reflection on what an idea, pushed to the irrational limit, can become. With a certain degree of irony, these absurdist models can become real if we do not consciously engage with the information and work on establishing of the equal dialogues—on personal and communities’ levels. At the same time, we speak about the imbalance between the voices from the East and West. As such, the exclusion of the eastern regions of Ukraine from the discourse before and after the beginning of the war in 2014 is one of the evidences of the domination of absurdist ideas that give endless credits to the decisions of ‘Western culture’.