Our European languages are full of quaint leftovers from the days of colonial might, where the South served as a convenient Other, whenever there was a need to name what was perceived as un-European disorder. Hidden fantasies, longings, fears and obsessions were projected onto the non-European world. And our languages are full of reminders of this. Certainly, much has been discarded on the rubbish piles of history, but we do still talk about “jungles of bureaucracy”, “Babylonian confusions of languages” etc. And these places actually exist in the real world, not just in our imagination or in florid linguistic exercises. Connected to the place names are complex constructions of ideas and connotations, of which many are still in need of a thorough analysis. Hence the current fashion in the museums’ world to mount large and ambitious “deconstructive” exhibitions, attempting to break down the structures of European myth making.
Two major exhibitions of this year are excellent examples (both in Berlin): “Babylon – Myth and Truth” at the Pergamon Museum (now closed) and “The Tropics” at Martin Gropius Bau (open till 5th January 2009).
The declared aim of “The Tropics” is to focus on the “energy that flows between the hemispheres” and analyze “which cultural factors work against each other and which work together”. This is sought through a re-aesthetization of the Tropics in order to re-define the relations between the West and these regions. By showing the artistic complexity and “aesthetic abundance” of the Tropics, hereby combining pre-Modern and pre-colonial artefacts and works by contemporary artists, the unfortunate logic of “Third World = poverty and misery” is questioned. The exhibition explicitly seeks to open up questions, but not always to answer them. Clever enough, since many questions still remain to be put and the answers are still a long way ahead of us. And in some instances, the exhibition is in fact successful. Some interesting lines of reflection are opened. At other points, the visitor is left sadly dissatisfied.
The aesthetization of “the Tropics” is in itself a problematic phenomenon. Let us not forget that “the Tropics” as such are a European creation, just as much as “the Orient”. The regions around the Equator are not by nature committed to sameness. And the aesthetic of “the Tropics” was often the key to its tragedy. The Tropics as the eternal promise - the lush, fertile and abundant jungle, the mysterious desert, strangely withdrawn from human understanding, were both landscapes and ideas of lurking danger (but also of pleasures, undreamt of), awaiting the explorer who set out to conquer (and penetrate) the virgin land. This European masculine obsession led to the exploitation of the environment in the regions in question with the disastrous effects we all know of. And so the presentation of the pre-Modern, pre-colonial artefacts as dating “from the time before the Tropics lost their innocence” is maybe slightly misplaced in a show that purports to do away with misconceptions.
The pre-Modern, pre-colonial artefacts presented in the exhibition do in fact give rise to some questions. First of all, why are they there? Rarely do they enter the dialogue with the contemporary works that the curators promise us. Most of all, they seem like decoration and therefore, more apt to confirm traditional European aesthetization of the tropics than question and re-define it. Non-Western sculptures, whether Indian Gods or African magical statuettes served as exotic props in many explorers’ homes, stripped of their meaning and reduced to mere decoration and amusement. The histories involved in these artefacts’ presence in a European collection are left untold, leading us to the next question: How did these objects get there? In a show whose ambition it is to redefine North-South relations, these questions are central, but unfortunately they are not addressed by the curators.
That museums turn an eye inwards and investigate their own role in the creation of myths is rare. And so it was with a great deal of curiosity that I visited the large exhibition “Babylon – Myth and Truth” of the prestigious Pergamon Museum. Accompanied by a collection of youthful pop merchandise, the show presented itself with a young face, surely designed with the commercial aim to attract as many visitors as possible, but not necessarily negative for that reason. And in fact, the exhibition was fun. Especially the “Myth” part that focused on the numerous connotations of the name “Babylon”. Traditionally these were rather negative – Babylon was the symbol of all that was to be abhorred and yet at the same time strangely alluring. The team of curators had accomplished a remarkable effort of “pop-culture archaeology” and compiled exhibits of such a varied kind as old pornographic novels telling tales of “Semiramis, the hot woman of the East”, silent films, Orientalist paintings, contemporary videos and installations to investigate the different layers of meaning that the name “Babylon” conjures up. The visitor met polyglot reality and linguistic confusion, the tower of Babylon as a symbol of human arrogance and megalomania, “Babylon” as symbol of immorality, sensual and “shameless” women, exile, exodus and extinction.
As a dialectic opposition to this “Myth” part the “Truth” part was positioned, presenting the reality, excavated in the course of many years of archaeological research on the site in modern Iraq, ancient Mesopotamia, of that town called “Babil”, which was the site of a refined high culture. An ancient metropolis of scientific and religious learning, whose legacy still live on, especially in magic and astrology. This part of the exhibition was situated in the Near Eastern department of the museum, to be entered through the famous Ishtar gate that was brought to Berlin from Babylon in the early 20th century (in itself very much part of the myth of Babylon). Babylon was excavated by the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey, whose meticulous scientific documentation practice set a standard for later excavations. Archaeology in those days was hardly innocent, too close was the relation between excavations and intelligence work and colonialist projects. And even when this does not necessarily diminish the quality of early archaeological research, it is part of our field’s history and as such it could easily fit into an exhibition of this format. Especially when the theme is “myth and truth.
The sad present condition of the site of Babylon (used as military training area by US and Polish troupes) was the topic of a number of videos shown at the exit of the museum. So sad it is, I would have appreciated if it had a more prominent part. After all, it is in our time, that the site is truly lost for posterity, the archaeological remains destroyed and artefacts smuggled out of the country to disappear in wealthy, clandestine collections. But maybe this did not seem fit to include in the proper exhibition, to disturbing is the reminder of huge this cultural failure. Despite these minor points of critique and my own feeling of being slightly overwhelmed by the sheer masses of exhibits and aspects, this was a truly monumental exhibition, and in this, probably very fitting for one of the capitals of culture and knowledge of the ancient world.
Exhibitions like the two presented here are (besides being spectacular, colourful and attractive) interesting examples of an innovative trend in museum practice and an important step in a new direction, where museums redefine their purpose towards a more hybrid and true presentation of the world we live in and its myriads of cultural aspects. If one or two things could have been done differently, it is still a development well worth following, a development that will lead away from the traditional presentation of “native” and ancient cultures as collections of trophies brought to the civilized world from the wild lands. An epoch, of which Candida Höfer’s collection of photographic portraits of European ethnographic collections, shown in “The Tropics”, could well be the epitaph.
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