Imagine, if you can, that you wake up one morning to find a full scale section of aircraft wing dissecting your living space. What could possibly have happened? Everything seems undisturbed, there is no rubble or evidence of a crash. Rather it is as if time has stopped while a ghost plane flies through your apartment. You go to touch the metallic surface believing that it will vanish, some apparition or dream, but the cold metal does not yield.
Simon Tyszko has contracted engineers to build a full size replica of a section of a dakota wing that literally cuts through his living space, a 5th floor flat in Fulham, London. Tyszko has removed some of the internal walls of his flat so that he cannot escape this intervention, be he having a bath or preparing a meal. He will live with this wing for one year, in which time, the installation will be open to the public a couple of days per week, viewed by appointment or through webcasts on the Phlight website. Also during this period, a number of writers will be responding to Tyszko's installation, in the form of texts for a forthcoming publication at the end of the project.
Obviously an aeroplane in an apartment cannot help but reference the horrifying events of September 11th, but Tyszko's attempt to live with this monumental metaphor makes this an optimistic exploration of potential ways forward. We may all have to live with the unseen threat imposed upon us since that fateful day, but Tyszko is literally living in the shadow of the wing. Recognising this absolute, Phlight will open on September 11th 2007, but apart from this, no attempt has been made to link this work to the events of this anniversary. It merely becomes an architectural fact, something for the artist to negotiate in his everyday existence. For Tyszko it is a monument to ideas and four years planning that he now has to live with. For the rest of us, it is the opportunity to witness this terrifying yet beautiful intervention in domestic space and contemplate our own reactions.
Simon Tyszko lives and works in London. Having never felt the need to conform to careerism he took a twenty year break in his art education to work with bands like the Clash. He showed with Jibby Bean in the late Nineties and has recently been included in exhibitions and events at the ICA, London and the Jerwood Gallery, London.
Chris Hammond, MOT Gallery London
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