September 08/ The Flyover Report

The Flyover Report
Featuring artist Annushka Gisella Peck

The experience of travel is inherently a 'liminal' (i.e. threshold or transitional) state. In this state, one can often find themselves in a position of vulnerability. Yet, it is also the case that within the vulnerability that such changing circumstances create, great opportunities for growth and transcendence also can be found. When the trajectory of the event can be anticipated, or understood prior to engagement however, as is often the case with "tourist" experiences of place, the opportunity for growth becomes limited by the pre-ordained routes of travel and package excursions. A corollary to this can be found in "armchair tourism" – an experience of 'place' derived by engagement with a mediated source, rather than a physical encounter. Such 'tourism' often occurs within the comfort of one's own home, though it may occur in any setting that offers easy familiarity, such as a hotel room television. This exploration of other cultures, places or events, provides the observer with a pre-selected viewpoint, a vantage point that is not arrived at through one's primary experience, but a secondary, pre-viewed and pre-digested understanding of the particular place, culture or event. This body of work is based, in part, on the recent experience of traveling to and from Ankara, Turkey via Frankfurt, Germany. The images used in this series are part of a larger series of television photographs taken while experiencing an unintended layover in Frankfurt, Germany. This series of pieces is intended to cull these different sets of experiences: the frustration of direct physical experience with the limitation of images of events and cultures one may only ever experience via mediation."