A microbiological odyssey
Meet Theo Tw’awki, an anthropomorphic cartoon virus reciting upbeat philosophical monologues on the nature of life and death while floating through an abstract microbiological underworld.The character’s name, only present in the work’s title, is an anagram for the doomsday slogan “The End Of The World As We Know It.”
This series was conceived as a whimsical philosophical meditation while under COVID quarantine. In the early months of quarantine, I became interested in the more mythic or allegorical contours of the pandemic. As a queer artist who came of age during the AIDS crisis, I noted both the similarities and profound differences in the societal response to yet another ‘viral plague’ and the inequalities it exposed. My response was to speculatively imagine the point of view of a non-human intelligence — a biological entity existing at the boundary between the Anthropocene and the Microbiocene — expressing itself from within the boundaries of its own virtual environment.
Little Creatures: Making Sense of Sean Capone’s Theo Tw’Awki
by Ivar Zeile, Denver Digerati
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Theo Tw’awki: Dispatches from the Interior opens with a brief, gimcracking title sequence, accompanied by cacophonous sound, the cute and tranquil Theo materializes as if awakening in the womb to check out its new digs. It doesn’t take long for the critter, a Covid19 virus, to realize it’s on camera before launching into a four-minute monologue on the nature of existence. A soliloquy for the ages resulting from a situation very few on earth would ever have imagined happening in their lifetime, sprung forth from the mind of moving image artist Sean Capone, one of the long-term purveyors of digital techniques. Like many others, Capone was compelled to offer up a take on the unlikely calamity thrust before society. Unlike many others, Capone’s foray into the unknown naturally dovetailed with his ongoing body of work entitled Avatar Poetics. This sequence of animations leverages motion capture and vocal performance in the pursuit of en-light-enment on social media culture, digital queerness, absurdity, as well as other timely and important topics Capone is inclined to explore. Influenced by the late, great 80’s icon Max Headroom, the original talking AI, as well as contemporary video pioneer Tony Oursler, Capone is gradually building a scintillating opus on the absurdity of life with a great deal of tactical nuance. In tackling philosophical territory, the body of work presents a striking counterbalance to the artist's more visible practice, one graced by vivid, complex abstractions intended for wider consumption as public art.
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In this initial episode in spring of 2020, the first in what promised to be a continuing series, hollow-eyed Theo hovers inside a dank cavern, a bronchial stage for this one-virus play, eventually surrounded by other pretty, faceless, randomly floating objects. Theo expounds on fellow molds, bacterias, funguses and other spore-producing organisms that his audience doesn’t readily recognize as “life forms.” These additional fanciful looking characters that slowly fill Theo’s environment, a combination of the amorphous and crystalline, intersect in peaceful harmony. Smarmy little Theo can’t help but glow when reflecting that his compatriots are not like sentient beings participating in the higher up food chain, instead residing in a blissful state of unawareness, lacking any and all motivation other than simply to exist. Theo basks in this conception of utopia that exists only for the barely visible and universally ignored like itself, an idealized life we mere humans seem to crave.
Amplifying its performance, Theo’s delivery and cadence is interrupted by distilled facial expressions intended to “get under the viewer's skin,” held just long enough for effect. “Life is perpetual alchemy” our hero declares, “existing for its own sake without aesthetics or emotions, dramas or demands,” in other words, the perfect existence unadulterated by the workings of a brain. The sequence grounds the playfulness of the work, the artist conjuring the scenario through whimsical aesthetics, and dubious drama for all to ponder. Theo Tw’awki infiltrates the communal psyche surrounding what, at the time, was a rapidly unfolding, calamitous global condition. The concluding sequence for episode one finds our narrator drifting away peacefully, the frame reduced to a microscopic view, declaring his introductory screed to be “haunting,” leaving us with a cliffhanger to ponder, as all good mysteries do. -
Theo Tw’Awki materialized on the heels of Capone’s Origins of the Speccies (2019), a hilarious battle of wits between a human-like stooge and an AI. That such a cute, smooth talking virus sounds more philosophically convincing is a wry comment in itself, one that impacts not only the surface of the pandemic dialogue, but the deeper conversation rooted in a societal culture that has grown so poisonous and unsettling that it could be considered an even larger existential threat than mere microbes could ever inflict. Capone’s infinitely clever title riffs on the expression “the end of the world as we know it,” made innocuously popular in the late 80’s by the band REM, but more recently embraced by growing legions of doomsday preppers like Alaska Granny. Capone incorporates an apostrophe, and adds an additional “h” for good measure to ground his character, and to further associate with those obsessed by the almighty. The doomsayers and evangelicals may have reasonable cause to obsess over an impending apocalypse, but Capone suggests they are not exactly focused on the appropriate source of their psychosis.
In 2021 Theo returned for more casual enlightenment in Part 2, dubbed The Tempest, this time encapsulating the human condition while experiencing a series of transformations within his comfy, now glistening surroundings, completely unbothered. Capone here injects dimensionality into his limited set piece, as well as movement suggesting that Theo is now on a journey of personal transcendence, where it's going being anyone’s guess. It’s a carefully calculated development, a Kubrickian stargate if you will, leading to infinite possibilities. -
Theo gradually takes on more of their own human characteristics while expounding on the plight of humans, which includes self-satisfaction, the dueling purposes of anxiety, our rapid descent, due to enchantment with technology, the fundamental mystery of evolution, stress, love or want thereof, etc… It’s a lot to digest in seven minutes, yet the concise snippets offered by our talking head resonate because they don’t require lengthy explanations in order to make sense, a reductionism extraordinaire for those who prefer subtlety over bombast.
Theo’s journey from tranquility in episode 1 towards expulsion from the body is conceptually gratifying and astute in its follow up, not just a potent reflection of the pandemic state, which currently rages on, but of the concept of acceptance and transcendence as potential antidotes to mass hysteria. Theo is eventually ejected from his bodily domicile, exiting with cheerful glee and perpetual wonderment into the unknown, excited as to what journey might lie next. It's anyone’s guess as to whether this most reasonable authority will materialize again, and in what form, but it's guaranteed that the mysteries of our universe will remain forever unknown.