Penrose Helix

About

Penrose Helix alludes to the theme of surveillance via the motif of the tower. Towers are landmarks, international figures that typify the idea of progress. Contemporary military superpowers send the top of the tower — the all-seeing eye — straight to space with a rocket, skipping the need for spiral staircases altogether. Down below on the surface, their market system still relies on the ascension of a staircase, but similarly to the Super Mario 64 obstacle ‘Endless Stairs’, the capitalist staircase can forever be climbed without making any progress. Ascension has become illusional, and we no longer know who the observer is and who the observed.

Penrose Helix features a publication with texts by Alex Quicho, Sonia Bernac, Ayla Dmyterko, Esme Boggis, Lucy Holt and Francesca Laura Cavallo. Contrary to its physical appearance and symbolic capital, the tower can exert insidious influence over its surroundings. The ironies of choosing Leviathan – ‘a mighty and terrifying beast, usually thought of as a monstrous sea dweller’ – as a title for Hobbes’ discussion on the social contract, were not lost on the author or his contemporaneous readers. The publication is centred on idiosyncratic and unusual explorations of that which towers over us: the social contract. Design: Can Yang, editor: Ed Hands.

Part of this exhibition is accessible online at plicnik.com/treshold.

Please book a slot at plicnik.com/book.