News From the In-Between, 1981, 18:40 minutes
Peacock’s conceptual video uses “radical displacement and endless car rides”—narrative, journal entries, weather reports, news broadcasts and repetition of text—to examine the fragility of personal memory. Typical sunny vacation photos are placed into a small pile of sand, followed by a chilly scene taken through a window, out into a snowy backyard. The appearance of an anchorperson sitting [AT] a desk with a telephone repeats several times; in a detached manner, she recalls various personal memories in the form of editorial statements. A hand draws a house with marker, and then pathways to that house, through a maze of small white blocks, recalling a childhood dream of discovered rubies; only to wake up the next morning without the jewels. Two postcards—a snowy scene of deer and palm trees in the sunset — are stacked on top of each other, shifting slightly to create new scenes, we learn, “At the point of connections at the point that divides.” (Peggy Gale on Vtape.org)