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David Lynch: Blurred Boundaries Anne Jerslev David Lynch: Blurred Boundaries “Longstanding Lynchian scholar Anne Jerslev brings her considerable expertise and knowledge of David Lynch’s wide-ranging artistic practice to great effect in this impressive book. Tackling Lynch’s output across various diverse genres and media, she expands the analysis of his oeuvre, adding to the better-known film and television work whilst delving into other less well-explored areas, thereby enriching our understanding of the significance of these different aspects of Lynch’s highly creative art life. By doing so Jerslev argues persuasively that each work, in whatever field, contrib- utes to a continuing and expanding experimental total work of art. David Lynch: Blurred Boundaries approaches Lynch’s artistic practice from a range of fascinating perspectives, supported throughout by detailed academic and philosophical sources, to explicate how and why David Lynch is an important artist whose work can help orientate us in the fragmented and precarious time in which we find ourselves.” —Allister Mactaggart, author of The Film Paintings of David Lynch: Challenging Film Theory (2010) “As early as 1991, when the original Twin Peaks was being placed on “indefinite hiatus”, Anne Jerslev wrote her first book on David Lynch, introducing new ideas and theoretical frameworks for understanding his body of work. In David Lynch: Blurred Boundaries, Professor Jerslev has turned her attention to different parts of his oeuvre, going beyond his popular films and TV series and also exploring some of his paintings, installations, music videos and commercials. Jerslev has written a book that is about more than just cinema—delving into fragments, textures, digital art and ambiguities—and she has opened our eyes to new ways of seeing and understanding Lynch’s work. Jerslev’s book is an important contribution to the field—highly insightful and philosophical, yet wonderfully clear and accessible— and it is a “must buy” for any scholar or fan of David Lynch and his many works.” —Andreas Halskov, author of TV Peaks: Twin Peaks and Modern Television Drama (2015) and Beyond Television: TV Production in the Multiplatform Era (2021) “Anne Jerslev, the author of the first scholarly monograph on David Lynch, has written a new book that offers a bold revision to how we think about Lynchian aesthetics. Decentering his feature films, she turns our attention to his paintings, photographs, shorts, music videos, commercials, and web documentary series, all in the interest of understanding his oeuvre as a “total work.” The possibilities for discovery seem nearly infinite with Jerslev as our guide through “installational exhibition” space, constructions of temporality and representations of aging, uses of digital technology, sound-image relations, the concept of the “fragment,” and the experience of the “uncanny” and the “sublime.” As she creatively brings together film and media theory, art history, and visual culture studies, she blurs as many boundaries as her experimental artist-subject.” —Will Scheibel, co-author (with Julie Grossman) of Twin Peaks (2020) Anne Jerslev David Lynch Blurred Boundaries Anne Jerslev Department of Communication University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark ISBN 978-3-030-73923-2 ISBN 978-3-030-73924-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73924-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland A cknowledgments I have been so lucky to be invited to talk about David Lynch’s work on different occasions and to different audiences during many years. These talks and inspiring questions from the audiences have been a great plea- sure. They have been immensely useful for taking on my thoughts and for writing this book. I am grateful for having been invited to present at SCMS panels: Thank you to Arild Fetveit and Asbjørn Grønstad for inviting me to talk about “Visual ‘noise’ in David Lynch’s Lady Blue Shanghai (2010)” back at the 2013 SCMS conference, to Martha Nochimson for asking me to talk about “David Lynch and haptic audio-visality in “Crazy Clown Time” (2011)” at SCMS 2015 and to Will Scheibel for inviting me to talk about “Textures of ageing in David Lynch’s work” at the SCMS 2018 conference. I would also like to thank Lucia Nagib for inviting me to talk about “David Lynch in the digital world—time, texture and digitality in the Interview Project” at the Impure Cinema seminar in Leeds back in 2010. Likewise, I would like to thank Jon Inge Faldalen for, back in 2014, inviting me to talk about “David Lynch’s digital works—Interview Project and Lady Blue Shanghai” at The Film House in Oslo and to Andreas Rauscher, Marcel Hartwig and Peter Niedermüller for asking me to talk about “David Lynch’s sense of temporality” at the Lynch seminar in Siegen, Germany in September 2019. Finally, thanks to Espen Ytreberg and Helge Jordheim for inviting me to spend parts of January and February 2019 at the Center for Advanced Studies in Oslo, Norway where I worked on the third chapter of this book. v vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my colleagues at the media section, Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen for contributing to an inspiring and enjoyable work environment and also for their feedback on the first broad outline of my manuscript. Above all, I would like to thank Christa Lykke Christensen, Stig Hjarvard, Mette Mortensen and Nete Nørgaard Kristensen for having been great colleagues during many years— and in particular Christa Lykke Christensen for nearly twenty-five years of friendship and conversations. In addition, I thank my colleagues, and first and foremost Anne Gjelsvik, at the Department of Art and Media Studies, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. I was kindly invited to Trondheim as a Professor II and I managed to present an outline of my book and give a few lectures before Covid-19, unfortunately, put an end to my visits. I thank Anne Ring Petersen for generously discussing my idea about The Air is on Fire as an installational exhibition and Marie Louise Svane for an inspiring discussion about the fragment and the German Romantics. I’m incredibly grateful to curator Hélène Kelmachter for meeting me in Paris to discuss The Air is on Fire and for reminding me of the exhibition choreography—and to Peter Jørgensen and Elin Skammelsen for discussing the Fondation Cartier building. Thanks are owed to Jesper Koppel, Jasper Spanning, Morten Bruus, Anders Lysne and Kenneth Varpe for telling me about different kinds of digital cameras and their affordances. I also owe my warmest thanks to Michael Barile, Patrick Gries, Jamie Manné, Adeline Pelletier and Jason S. and Austin Lynch for their helpful- ness on granting me permission to use illustrations. Finally, thank you to David Lynch for his final approval of reproducing paintings, drawings and photographs in my book. Not least, I would like to thank my husband, Erik Svendsen. When I wrote my first book about David Lynch, I thanked him for always generously laying his own works aside in order to read mine and for giving me inspiring and precise feedback. Quite a few things have changed during the past 30 years; however, this has not changed: Erik is always enthusias- tic about reading my work. He is both generous and sharp, and always offers valuable comments and suggestions. Finally, thanks to our daughter Nina Jerslev Svendsen for her continu- ous encouragement. This book is dedicated to Erik and Nina. c ontents 1 Introduction 1 What This Book Is and What It Is Not 1 The Blurring of Boundaries 5 The Chapters 9 2 Lynchian Atmospheres: About and Around The Air Is on Fire (2007): An Installational Exhibition 15 The Lynch Exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, France 15 Intermediality 29 This Man Was Shot 0.9502 Seconds Ago (2004) 32 An Installational Exhibition 39 Atmospheres and Lynchian Atmospheres 42 Atmospheric Film Spaces in Lynch 52 A Contemporary Total Media Work 56 3 David Lynch and Time: Textures of Ageing 61 Textures, Abstractions, Transformations 64 Textures of Ageing—Abandoned Factory Photography and Snowmen 72 Textures of Ageing—Alvin’s Face in The Straight Story 79 Textures of Ageing in Twin Peaks: The Return 86 The Death of Margaret Lanterman 86 The Ghost of Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks: The Return 91 “Meanwhile” 96 vii viii CONTENTS 4 David Lynch and the Digital 101 “Digital is Here” 101 Interview Project—An i-doc 104 The Website 108 Meetings 108 Having Been There—“Indexical Traces” 111 Traces of Time Passing 115 The Post-perspectival and Post-cinematic: Screens and Time in INLAND EMPIRE 117 A World of Digital Screens 117 The Film 123 “Some Newer Media Form”: Transgressing the Boundaries between Media 125 The Digital Event 128 Screens and Surveillance 129 Two Different Digital Works 136 5 David Lynch and Visual Noise 139 Visual Noise 143 Visual Noise: Short Experimental Films 145 Visual Noise in Lady Blue Shanghai 154 David Lynch and Commercials 154 Lady Blue Shanghai 157 Visual Noise in Crazy Clown Time and I Have a Radio 165 6 David Lynch and the Fragment 175 “I Always Go by Ideas” 177 The Fragment in Theory 183 The “Dance for Freedom” Fragment and the “Dying Girl” Fragment in Wild at Heart 191 Four Kinds of Fragments 197 The “Las Vegas” Fragment 200 The “Floating Cube” Fragment in Twin Peaks: The Return, Episode 3 200 Veiling Fragments 205 Spectacle Fragments 207 CONTENTS ix 7 David Lynch and Fear: The Uncanny and the Sublime 215 The Uncanny—in Freud and in Lynch 215 Freud and The Sandman 222 “Home” 231 The Sublime 234 The White Sands Atomic Bomb Explosion in Twin Peaks: The Return, Episode 8 244 8 Conclusion 251 The Blurring of Boundaries—Again 251 Worlds and the Blurring of Boundaries between Dream and Reality 254 Repetition and the Blurring of Boundaries 257 Blurry Images 260 Notes 269 References 297 Index 313