A story imagined in a time when isolating societies
was the only approach towards rationalizing the
cultural differences of various peoples. It is also
a story that was told to reinforce control through
the fear of God and the Other. I have thought of the Internet as a platform, which,
because of its intangible nature and the impact it
has on the way people communicate, bears a quality
unique in h
uman history. The potential of unlimited
cultural exchange theoretically provides
people with the ability to be equally informed on
a cultural level, no matter the geography of their
physical presence. This seems possible since now,
more than ever before – and in a projection of an
utopian future even more – people are increasingly
able to have the same access to information,
entertainment, art etc. Therefore, cultural identification
and development are not only bound to a
certain region, but are enhanced through the virtual
cultural community. As a result, a new common
ground is being established and – presumably
– everyone’s invited. By organizing a collaborative process in which the
author’s role (after defining the first set of rules:
image format, black and white, vertical construction
of the tower) would be to channel the submitted
work into the final piece as an administrator,
I tried to point out how differentiations that are
mythically rooted in the collapse of the Tower can
today be bypassed. As we built the tower on a
virtual level, we found the space where the issues
that started at the moment God decided to destroy
the mythical structure can potentially be resolved. But experiencing heterotopia does not necessarily
mean that we have achieved utopia. Even if this
heterotopia is being experienced by a variety of
people in a global scale, it can be argued that this
state of open transition is potentially dangerous
because of the mere fact that it makes utopia seem
so close, within our grasp. The simplest example
would be the fact that the Internet is not the platform
of limitless access we imagine. Personal experience
of “the other place” could make us ignorant
about the fact that certain real-life restrictions
don’t allow everyone to have the same experience,
as authoritarian control and financial restrictions
limit communication. What in the Bible was God,
today is politics and finance. These thoughts lead to the second part of this
book, the research project of Babel, where I collected
information about parliament buildings
worldwide. I think of these palaces as glorified
fragments of the destroyed mythical tower, as
shrines to the failure of peoples to communicate. In a similar manner to a flag or an anthem, buildings
of state authorities are meant to function as
symbols. Their architecture is supposed to embody
certain political and social values that are important
to the people (power and autonomy of state,
freedom, democratic values, historical background
etc.) and to establish in the mind of the
citizens that – in order to enjoy those privileges
– an obedience to the nation and the state as its
real-life manifestation is necessary. It is interesting
to observe how this political mechanism of
promise and intimidation seems inherent in all
kinds of regimes. Words like freedom and republic
are used freely and lavishly and seem to have lost
their literal meaning. Language – along with a
variety of cultural elements – has become a weapon
of propaganda, a shroud to the ideals, analogue
to many parliamentary buildings, appearing as
shells depleted of their promises. Starting this
project, I was planning to investigate on the similitude
of these structures worldwide, demonstrating
how the notion of a nation as a differentiating
factor is an illusion used by societies as a self-sustaining
mechanism. In this Internet-based research a glimpse of this
argument is apparent. Interesting similarities in
the parliamentary structures reveal the need of a
state to establish the concept of a powerful and
autonomous nation by using similar patterns,
while it also gives us a starting point on thoughts
regarding older and contemporary colonial practices. But the online nature of the initiative reveals
another unexpected function regarding the
use of the Internet as a platform by ruling institutions. During the research process it occurred to me that
in a similar manner to the one in which an institution
manages to impose itself as the protector
of “all that is good” within the physical space
through its architectural structure, it is also being
represented as a digital entity. If we witness a
structured presentation of the cultural elements
that define the ideology the assembly represents,
we can assume that the institution regards an online
presence as a powerful tool. In the amount of
information that an assembly distributes in the
web, we see once again cultural elements to be
manipulated in order to prove the autonomy of a
nation to the public. Therefore, even if the heterotopia of the web has
magnificent potential for equality, as a space
where the Tower can be rebuilt, it is at the same
time used as a new platform for the glorification
of the Tower’s fragments – the political shells of
parliament buildings. Acknowledging this should
make us aware of the need to understand the power
we came to possess by the ability to distribute
and consume unlimited information, and of course
to be skeptical of naive claims in online cultural
production.
