Dallas

Dallas plays with the eponymous nature of this TV series, broadcast in many countries, it became a short hand for both American glamour and corruption, and indeed both repelled and seduced audiences in its relentless drama of power play and cliché. Here, in Dallas, the entire viewing-year of 1980 - a total of 18 episodes – is compressed into a 50-min, all-at-once experience. As text is layered over text, the compression and corruption here is spatial and temporal. The ghostly figures loom in a milky underworld, moving around a familiar scape of Texas with its skyscrapers and vast landscapes. In a way, what we are presented with promises to be in some way an ‘essence’, an undiluted version of the ‘original’ and to an extent this is true. Yet there is also a haunting quality to this work, where iconic faces loom, notorious events referenced and lines delivered; yet there is a disjunction at the heart of Dallas. It is a culture that is at once familiar and disorientating, Dallas appears to be a dreamscape of different order, more nightmare than escapist.