“The conspiracy theory,” writes Boris Groys, “is the metaphysics of our time.” The series Twin Peaks represents the explosion of this metaphysics onto the surface of the TV screen; breaking apart the flatness of the TV image and inviting us to explore deeper, further. The secrets behind picket fences. The darkness in the woods. The uncanniness of small-town America. The owls are not what they seem.
Functioning like a kind of media-psychosis, febrile with a paranoid semiotics, the series “combines and re-combines the fragments of the visible world in a (futile) hope to find a combination that will offer an insight to the dark, hidden core.” I have read that every time a character in the series smokes a yellow-tipped ‘English’ cigarette it is a sign of their impending death. I have read that electric power lines are a means of transport for evil spirits, the inhabitants of the Black Lodge. I have read that the owls are familiars of these same spirits, that the owls are the screen memories of UFO abductees, that the owls are watchers, listeners, the CCTV of the Other Place.
I have a catalogue essay in the book accompanying the present exhibition by artists, Roey Hunt and Philip Zweigers at Bruno Glint Gallery, on Clapton Road, London. You can browse through the booklet online, which also features writing by Stephen Hayward, Nicholas Johnson, Rosie Farrell, and Maya Tounta. Tomorrow night (Friday the 29th of March) will be the official ‘launch’ as well as the closing night of the exhibition itself, and will feature a performance by Ram Samocha and a reading by ‘London Perambulator’, Nick Papadimitrou. The event takes place at Bruno Glint, Unit 15 Tram Depot, 38-40 Upper Clapton Road, London, from 7pm until 11. For more information check out the Allotrope Press site or Bruno Glint.
[Photo credit: Paul Williams Fragment Photography]
