Budhaditya Chattopadhyay: Berlin Babylon and a Migratory Bird

On one of these rainy Autumn evenings, I sneaked into the New Babylon building located behind the Den Haag Central Station, with a broken-wheel heavy suitcase of mine, while I was back in Den Haag from Berlin after one of these perpetual travels. As I entered the foyer, there was some loading and unloading taking place around the adjacent Albert Heijn. There were a few passersby as well walking shadily through the deserted and semi-darkened corridors. The broken wheels of my suitcase were enlivening the paranormal underbelly of this building with nomadic sonic utterances. There were a few migratory birds outside proclaiming the coming of evening in rapturous murmurs. I took out my recording device, and started to chronicle these emergent interactions in mediated aural traces, before its battery went out. I brought these sounds home, and re-listened to them. This listening formed the work Berlin Babylon and a Migratory Bird in which a bird literally entered and left a trace as an expired memory.

Acknowledgements: the unnamed birds, the loaders/unloaders, and the broken wheels of my suitcase.