’Airport’ features a single shot out through curved windows at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. It is winter, the light pale, streaks of snow in the grass between runways. No travellers are visible, only taxiing planes and service vehicles and a sea of cement, which together form a grand choreography, where everyday life is reduced to the background, to minimalism and waiting, grasped in an almost imperceptible silent movement. Everything is slow, minimal, precise… The work’s lack of sound is a defining attribute. The landing strip is in the background. Unnoticed, the moment of taking off / landing is thus softened and relegated into the realm of commonplace. Attached to the terminal in the foreground a large aircraft dissolves into frame – the film accomplishes within an ordinary winter day, suggesting the ongoing reiteration of action and life. Monotonous, repetitive action is likely to extend indefinitely, as finally nothing really happens. A Zen-like approach granting the quality of an Eleatic aporia, the paradox of the “frozen action” illustrates the philosophy of passage, of the imperceptible, of caducity.
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