Heather Hayward

04 Sept 13 WLG-HAM 2013 (2013)

9 min 45 secSingle channel / Digital Video / Colour / Sound

One hour of pen to paper, 30,000 feet in the air, 525km travelled.

Airplane travel is nothing new, but I’ve never felt my eyes, body and mind so fragmented on a flight. The man who wrote me the letter went missing in the landscape below the plane.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to see him on the ground, yet I couldn’t stop looking. I’ve never felt so connected to the distance between myself and the ground on a plane trip. I wondered if the spirit of the missing body had departed and was somewhere up near the aircraft.

Me, in this great machine in the air. One old man, missing on the ground. How can we connect? Where are we in relation to each other? These three works, a letter, a drawing made in the plane and a film from the plane window are attempts to record a moment in time, via my body, a distance, a height and a speed travelled.

"Orientation is no longer possible. We have lost our points of reference to orient ourselves. The derealised man is a disorientated man."

Paul Virilio

Other works by Heather Hayward

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