The Window

In the meantime, we’re very excited to have launched our new window gallery at our studio on Old Kent Road. We kicked off our first trio of exhibitions with FANTASY TIME by Eilis Searson.



FANTASY TIME by Eilis Searson

Can communities come together in ways that would require massive industrial systems to adapt to our desires? For instance, the desire for a cup of tea half way through Coronation Street?

When Gail Platt’s third husband, Richard Hillman (aka Tricky Dicky), attempted his final crimes, the nation was left so shocked that a phenomenon called ‘TV Pickup’ occurred — where a surge in electricity usage across the country caused a power-cut. Such sudden swells in demand tied to the TV schedule are unique to the UK.

Coronation Street, airing three times a week, occupies a window of time that critic Dennis Porter calls “fantasy time” — 7:30PM. In the relatively fixed rhythm of the working day, this is a moment of respite for the traditional working class family, after everyone has been fed, and before the chore of announcing bedtime. Fantasy comes to occupy a structuring place at the centre of an active day. Eagerly anticipated beforehand, it reverberates suggestively afterwards and constitutes in its own way a critique of the workaday life it intrudes. Soap Opera is therefore frequently regarded as a time for freedom, where a passage through the looking glass of the TV screen offers a realm of irresistible intensities.

Even in the age of TV on demand, electricity networks still devote considerable resources to predicting and providing supply for these surges in watching habits. We might think of this collectivity as power.