Aircraft (F.A.L.)

2015-2021,  single channel video projection, black & white, stereo audio

Aircraft (F.A.L.) was recorded with a camera in an empty factory hall. The scene was created and added with the aid of an elaborate 3D model. A hybrid representation that creates the illusion of a photographic reality. Since Oil workers... (2013), David Claerbout has regularly spoken of beings and materials stripped of their content, acting as nothing more than a brilliant zombie, and of the impact of the disintegration of the photographic image and the loss of optic confidence systems.
The 'assembly line' in Aircraft (F.A.L.) is not a random choice. "Working with synthetic images is operating in an extremely fragmented world where masses of details pretend to be a totality", explains Claerbout referring to the work of neuropsychologist Iain McGilchrist and his theory about divided attention. “The synthetic image does indeed have something pathological about it, similar to the fragmented sensorial world of the schizophrenic patient.”
The airplane in Aircraft (F.A.L.) with its airgrade aluminium carcass, which like all airplanes is supposed to overcome gravity, is here caught in the Cartesian coordinate system consisting of millions of polygons. Resting on an improvised wooden scaffolding, it looks as if it has been hastily placed on life support. In an attempt to rearrange the linearity of our experience of time into layers that cross each other, Aircraft (F.A.L.) features an object that looks simultaneously unfinished and redundant, as if it were a newly discovered sarcophagus. In the same way, the factory hall - where the future is being produced - is interchanged with the museum - where the past is being made. 

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