Babel Series

Babel Series is the first video installation by the artist Candice Breitz. Seven television monitors—mounted on the wall at different heights—display loops of fragmented speech. The stuttering, monosyllabic loops are derived from well-known music videos by pop icons such as Madonna, Grace Jones, Sting, Prince, Freddie Mercury and George Michael. The videos loop endlessly and noisily before the viewer, resulting in a cacophonous blast wherein language morphs and mutates into babble, as repetition erodes any sense and the possibility of meaningful communication.

Babel Series in many respects remains a key to Breitz’s subsequent work, both in its exploration of the relationship between language and subject-formation, and in its keen theft and revision of pop iconography. Breitz’s reduction of pop music lyrics to nonsensical syllables is a reminder of the manner in which mass culture reduces its audience to a state of helpless infantilism. The work evokes an astute parallel between the stages of a child’s acquisition of speech and the steps through which consumers absorb the lingua franca of today’s global mass entertainment culture.