Catalogue > At random

Babel is a drone shot centered on the Ziggurat of Borsippa, which was long considered to be the remains of the Tower of Babel before a more likely location for the edifice was found. Our imaginations have been nourished by the story of Genesis, which popularized this construction as excessive as the pride of the people who built it. It marked mankind’s inability to reach the heavens, despite its efforts to build a monument of unprecedented elevation. And the contemporary situation of Babylon, the cosmopolitan capital of an empire that then covered the entire Near East, was a good illustration of the diversity of languages that was the consequence of the failure of the attempt. In the soundtrack, a composition by Romain Poirier and excerpts from Genesis are translated and read by two artificial intelligence programs (DeepL and ElevenLabs), redefining the permanent link between humanity’s attempts to rebuild – this time virtually – the Tower of Babel through artificial intelligence and transhumanism, and humanity’s constantly renewed errors.

The Middle East, countries that are not internationally recognized, radioactive or forbidden zones considered as “involuntary natural parks” are all territories that Louis-Cyprien Rials has traveled or inhabited. The artist, born in Paris in 1981, uses video and photography to present a silent, sometimes mystical image of these areas marked by past violence or agitated by major conflicts. These moving pictures composed of fixed shots, often long and devoid of human presence, tell of the impossibility of capturing these abandoned and transformed spaces, impregnated with beliefs and strewn with stigmata.