Walking Ghosts Installation Recalls Twin Peaks-Era Lynch

WALKING GHOSTS courtesy of Etienne Bardelli.

Do you remember that one scene in Twin Peaks where Agent Dale Cooper dreams of Bob saying "I'll catch you with my death bag" before Cooper re-locates to a red-tinted, echo-y room with patterned tile and the dwarf who speaks in tongues?

I am still haunted by that scene. I'm sure you're still haunted by that scene. French artist and graphic designer, Etienne Bardelli, recently installed a huge room called Walking Ghost in Blida--a new art center in Metz, France--that recalls the Lynchian moment that continues to give us nightmares.

is literally a red-tinted, echo-y space filled with constantly shaking chandeliers, fun-house mirrors, and colorful sculptures. Itwas installed for the all-night Nuit Blanche arts festival that ran from October 5th through 6th, and it it's described as "an overflow of limitless colors, shimmering lights, and gleaming aborted steel structures… A space imagined as the last carefree breath of a failing industry."

In other words, this is the intersection of an ostentatious palace and a decrepit warehouse. In Bardelli's own terms, "The Walking Ghosts hall is an environment which attempts to draw together the excesses of Versaille's decorum and the colourful, catastrophic aesthetic of the ruins of a nuclear power plant."

Either way, it's just in time for Halloween. Take a look at the video, and have flashbacks to Laura Palmer's death all over again.

Check out more of Bardelli's work, here. And in case you need a Twin Peaks refresher:

@zachsokol