LASTCALL, a blog about airports.
An airport is a tract of levelland where aircrafts land and take off, usually equipped with hard-surfaced landing strips, a control tower, hangars, aircraft maintenance and refueling facilities, as well as accommodations for passengers and cargo. Airports are public and busy spaces, they are the most complex and dynamics station owed to the importance of the air traffic in our times.
But an airport is much more than that. An airport is a conglomeration of all cultures, it is a place of floating bodies of people in limbo, a place where everyone is waiting to be somewhere else, it is a place of contradictions. It is a so called “No-Land”, where dead time seems constantly present. An airport is the ultimate waiting room. And yet, it is a center of contemporary culture, a place where identity is scrutinized thoroughly, and also shed like a snakeskin. We become anonymous and homogeneous.
Nowdays most of the airports are big terminals where we can do a lot of things instead of flying in or out of. Airports are not only a station for passengers, with most of them being amazing architectural buildings, they are a new kind of building, something in between a station and a mall. Like big cities outside a normal city. The first and last view of such city, area, or country. Airports are places where people from everywhere can meet.
ARTISTIC BACKGROUND.
Other authors have talked about airports before: in 1993 the french director Philippe Lioret directed the film Tombés du ciel, a story about the iranian refugee Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who lived several years in Charles de Gaulle Airport (Paris). This film received awards at the San Sebastian Film Festival and Yubari International Film Festival in 1993.
The Turner Prize winner in 2007, Mark Wallinger, has a video: Threshold to the Kingdom, made in 2002. The narrative is simple: passengers arriving at London’s International Terminal come through double doors toward a static camera. Some of the travelers have people waiting for them. One of the travelers looks confused as he checks and rechecks a scrap of paper. Others stride forward with business-like determination.
Also, Adrián Paci, an artist from Albania who is currently based in Milan, worked in 2007 with an airport as a stage for his work: Centro di Permanenza Temporanea, where he reflects about acceptance, refuge or identity concepts. Adrian talks about trips, thereshold, wait or transit, in our world where inmigration is constant.
Furthermore; in 2004, Steven Spielberg directed “The TERMINAL”, another film about Mehran Karimi Nasseri. A film starring Tom Hanks and the airport was in New York.
STARTING POINT.
Have you ever gone through the same thing? When you arrive at an airport and read in the monitor that your flight is delayed. You may not know for how long and you have to wait at the airport waiting room. What do you do there?.
Some months ago, while I was waiting to board my plane, I was thinking about how many times I had been in exactly this situation before and how many times I would be in it in the future. That evening, I decided to talk about it: about all the airports I had been waiting for long hours, and in all the airports I possibly have to wait in the future before boarding my flight. I would like to talk about it, about why there are some airports I like, and why I do not like some others.
In those days I was working in a project which was born online, so I decided to create a blog as a way to invite artists and non-artists to talk about their own experiences at airports. It was more than one year ago, in June 2010, lastcall was born.
LASTCALL, is a personal project as well as an open project which was born as a reflection of many hours spent at airports waiting to fly out. Artists and non-artists have the opportunity to send their photos and opinions about the time spent at airports around the world. I invite them to reflect about the use of the new public spaces, to analyze by photo language how limitis between public and private space disappear in an airport terminal.
LastCall was born on last 10th, July, 2010. It was born as a temporary which was going to finish last 7th, february, 2011, but a great public response, an individual exhibition in Ph´a´ke Bilbao: Ph'a'ke . photoartekomite another one in Viewfinder Gallery in London in April.
LASTCALL CONCEPT.
If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place.
Marc Augé (Non-Place: Introduction to an Antropology of Supermodernity)
I for myself feel that there has been a different history for me since last July (2010) which is definitely depicted in each uploaded blog-photo. Each photo shows a different time spent in a different airport. Sometimes thought, I took several photos at the same airport. What a big difference between the day you arrive at an aiport and the day you have to fly back. But always in an unpredictable and temporal context.
This blog was born and has grown because I like airports, those impersonal and indifferent spaces, with artificial light which me remembers an hospital somedays or a comercial center another ones.
Everyday I take my camera I try to catch the physical structures which build this false city where people unwrap. I use photo filter to intensify this artificial light in this artificial city and emphasize the lonely.
Lastcall is an online diary that show us every airport where some day ago we were waiting at.
The first exhibition was last December in Ph´a´ke (Bilbao, Spain), later in April LastCall “landed” in London in Viewfinder Photography Gallery.
An airport is a tract of levelland where aircrafts land and take off, usually equipped with hard-surfaced landing strips, a control tower, hangars, aircraft maintenance and refueling facilities, as well as accommodations for passengers and cargo. Airports are public and busy spaces, they are the most complex and dynamics station owed to the importance of the air traffic in our times.
But an airport is much more than that. An airport is a conglomeration of all cultures, it is a place of floating bodies of people in limbo, a place where everyone is waiting to be somewhere else, it is a place of contradictions. It is a so called “No-Land”, where dead time seems constantly present. An airport is the ultimate waiting room. And yet, it is a center of contemporary culture, a place where identity is scrutinized thoroughly, and also shed like a snakeskin. We become anonymous and homogeneous.
Nowdays most of the airports are big terminals where we can do a lot of things instead of flying in or out of. Airports are not only a station for passengers, with most of them being amazing architectural buildings, they are a new kind of building, something in between a station and a mall. Like big cities outside a normal city. The first and last view of such city, area, or country. Airports are places where people from everywhere can meet.
ARTISTIC BACKGROUND.
Other authors have talked about airports before: in 1993 the french director Philippe Lioret directed the film Tombés du ciel, a story about the iranian refugee Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who lived several years in Charles de Gaulle Airport (Paris). This film received awards at the San Sebastian Film Festival and Yubari International Film Festival in 1993.
The Turner Prize winner in 2007, Mark Wallinger, has a video: Threshold to the Kingdom, made in 2002. The narrative is simple: passengers arriving at London’s International Terminal come through double doors toward a static camera. Some of the travelers have people waiting for them. One of the travelers looks confused as he checks and rechecks a scrap of paper. Others stride forward with business-like determination.
Also, Adrián Paci, an artist from Albania who is currently based in Milan, worked in 2007 with an airport as a stage for his work: Centro di Permanenza Temporanea, where he reflects about acceptance, refuge or identity concepts. Adrian talks about trips, thereshold, wait or transit, in our world where inmigration is constant.
Furthermore; in 2004, Steven Spielberg directed “The TERMINAL”, another film about Mehran Karimi Nasseri. A film starring Tom Hanks and the airport was in New York.
STARTING POINT.
Have you ever gone through the same thing? When you arrive at an airport and read in the monitor that your flight is delayed. You may not know for how long and you have to wait at the airport waiting room. What do you do there?.
Some months ago, while I was waiting to board my plane, I was thinking about how many times I had been in exactly this situation before and how many times I would be in it in the future. That evening, I decided to talk about it: about all the airports I had been waiting for long hours, and in all the airports I possibly have to wait in the future before boarding my flight. I would like to talk about it, about why there are some airports I like, and why I do not like some others.
In those days I was working in a project which was born online, so I decided to create a blog as a way to invite artists and non-artists to talk about their own experiences at airports. It was more than one year ago, in June 2010, lastcall was born.
LASTCALL, is a personal project as well as an open project which was born as a reflection of many hours spent at airports waiting to fly out. Artists and non-artists have the opportunity to send their photos and opinions about the time spent at airports around the world. I invite them to reflect about the use of the new public spaces, to analyze by photo language how limitis between public and private space disappear in an airport terminal.
LastCall was born on last 10th, July, 2010. It was born as a temporary which was going to finish last 7th, february, 2011, but a great public response, an individual exhibition in Ph´a´ke Bilbao: Ph'a'ke . photoartekomite another one in Viewfinder Gallery in London in April.
LASTCALL CONCEPT.
If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place.
Marc Augé (Non-Place: Introduction to an Antropology of Supermodernity)
I for myself feel that there has been a different history for me since last July (2010) which is definitely depicted in each uploaded blog-photo. Each photo shows a different time spent in a different airport. Sometimes thought, I took several photos at the same airport. What a big difference between the day you arrive at an aiport and the day you have to fly back. But always in an unpredictable and temporal context.
This blog was born and has grown because I like airports, those impersonal and indifferent spaces, with artificial light which me remembers an hospital somedays or a comercial center another ones.
Everyday I take my camera I try to catch the physical structures which build this false city where people unwrap. I use photo filter to intensify this artificial light in this artificial city and emphasize the lonely.
Lastcall is an online diary that show us every airport where some day ago we were waiting at.
The first exhibition was last December in Ph´a´ke (Bilbao, Spain), later in April LastCall “landed” in London in Viewfinder Photography Gallery.
