tower of silence | 2024
tower of silence, an immersive installation by LABOUR (Farahnaz Hatam & Colin Hacklander), presented in the exhibition After Images at the Julia Stoschek Foundation, Berlin.

tower of silence was presented in the group exhibition After Images at the Julia Stoschek Foundation, Berlin (September 15th, 2024 - July 20th, 2025)

The installation draws on 3,000-year-old Zoroastrian sky burial practices, in which the bodies of the deceased are placed on open-air platforms (dakhma, or Towers of Silence) to be devoured by vultures, eventually leaving the bones to be dried in the baking sun. Every half hour, participants encounter an activation of sound and light through which LABOUR explore three types of silence: forced silence, stoic silence, and profound silence.
In combination with vibrating subwoofers and lighting patterns—from very low light to color and intense strobe effects—the spatially oriented piece brings us to the edges of perception so that we might pass through different states of being to transcend earthly sensations. While the sound composition draws on glissandi, a sculpture at the center of the space swoops down like a giant beak from the sky, inspired by Greek composer Iannis Xenakis’s early scores, to represent such dramatic upward and downward transitions.