Jacob Talkowski, 404 NM/H Into The Horizon

20 April - 28 May

Thursday to Sunday, 12-6pm

Opening Party: Thursday 20 April, 6-9pm. All welcome!

poster + press release

image credit: Jacob Talkowski

A conversation between Jacob Talkowski and Maddie Exton

ME: I really like your comparison of the expansiveness of a horizon to the vastness of the Internet. How do you capture infinity in an object?

JT: I wish I knew! I think for me, it’s about the surfaces involved, and making things that have a flatness to them (which is different from being itself, flat) which could feel expansive and forever, where the boundaries could almost blur away and surface becomes abstract plane. In that way, I look at the surface of the sea as the expanse the same way the internet can be, and the sea is a helpful analogue for this because although it feels flat and forever when we look to the horizon- we all know that it’s constantly in motion, pushing and pulling at itself, not quite as hyper-flat as it would seem.

image credit: Sean Hancock

image credit: Jacob Talkowski

ME: Can you tell us about the title of your show? 

JT: So, the format itself comes from t.A.T.u’s debut album “200 km/h in the Wrong Lane” which, haha, is a fun reference point for me, the idea of an intense directionality is so present in my work, and to have that direction be fast and confident and knowingly the wrong way is- something about that is very exciting. But perhaps more importantly I borrowed that format because (despite having some bangers!) it locates the show for those who know in and around that early 00’s time, before “the internet” became just 4 social media apps and Wikipedia begging for support. It’s also quite a formative age for me (being born in ‘97) so my memory of that ‘cyber space’ (remember when we called it that?) is blurry again still. Part of the show and a larger inspiration for my practice is how being from the fringes in a coastal Norfolk (and at the time, not being happy about it) interlinks with this new, digital space, but that has no location, so you can’t physically go back to. The nautical miles per hour point to this water theme, and the horizon is just over that point we can’t quite grasp. The 404 speed is of course a reference to everyone’s favourite website error code- but in this reference I try to begin building this connection between the expanse of a plain white screen at the “edge” of the internet and that horizon line.

image credit: Jacob Talkowski

ME: What attracts you to tools?

JT: LOVE a good tool. A device. A thingy that does that thing ykno? So handy. 

ME: We spoke about how your two hung pieces are in conversation with each other. Who are they talking to? 

JT: They’re… monologues maybe, internal conversations. Thought-musings. When you imagine how a conversion could have gone, or you dwell on words unsaid, it’s that. I see Flatness as being stood at the waters edge on the beach, looking at the horizon with some sadness, I don’t know why but I always imagine this as a very grey British day, February maybe.

Is it Cold? Is stood in this same vignette, but maybe, a few metres back and to the side. Almost as a ghost, or someone unseen who has been stood where the other is, and knows. That voice knows. And it’s commenting, thinking, remembering maybe, what that perspective was.

Something about these works feels very somber, almost directly sad, but- I don’t know, I care for them and their perspective a lot. I like how both of their formality is softened just slightly by their physical making and install. 

image credit: Jacob Talkowski

ME: We spoke about how the markings in your work could reference internet language and folklore. Can you tell us about that?

JT: There’s something about the Unicode list of characters that is just incredible to me. It really might be the best Wikipedia page ever, there’s just so much content there to absorb- and it’s not even the full list! 

By selecting characters from across so many scripts, from languages, to symbols- to more, they can kind of distance themselves from what they once were, and become just data points. The transition from tool to make word into just glyph gives these data points this almost runic feel, which is interesting, because in the works I’ve utilised them for I’ve referenced broken code in a 00’s Windows™️ “blue screen of death” and overly decorative navigational equipment. The slight poke at those things being potentially so “future” for their time that they feel like magic symbols really pulls from my love of video games, I think of item boxes in Mario Kart and the way they float, or a friend of mine recently commented that Device looks like some kind of Yu-Gi-Oh spell. What is the folklore of the internet going to be? How will we unearth and dig up memes in 1000 years? That is all potential new areas for my practice to dip into, and we’ll see what develops. 

image credit: Sean Hancock

ME: I wonder if you can tell us about your relationship with your home? 

JT: It’s complicated. I feel like I spent so much of my time growing up hating being from the coast in a falling apart seaside town, that I’ve almost like a horse-shoe gone so far one direction it’s flipped to the other and I love it dearly. Things are hard when you’re young and you can’t find what you want in the world where you live. I think that’s why my sense of internet is so strong, because I was (still am, baby!!) such a computer person. I never wanted to go out and play? I loved being indoors. I loved being cosy and indoors, and adventuring to other worlds and stories /through/ the glass of the screen. It’s strange, but now my sense of home feels scattered through so many pieces of media and the experiences of that media. Home is shitty flash games for free online, home is inside the Sonic Adventure 2: Battle menu glitches, home is WARNING! OK CANCEL DELETE, home is the theme music for the twilight in Zelda, home is playing Mario Party by yourself, home is standing in the sand and wondering what else there is.

image credit: Sean Hancock