Johan Grimonprez: Inflight

Johan Grimonprez’s Inflight is a take off on the airline magazines found on commercial flights.

As such, it contains all the appropriate iconography: motion discomfort bag, safety instructions, in-flight entertainment, shopping specials, passenger information, plus a series of feature articles, as well as some uncommercials and subvertisements. The List will create a lounge installation with a selection of related videos, in which visitors may peruse this publication and associated materials. Inflight gives the visual and written account of airplane hijacking, as seen through the history of its indeterminate relationship with news media. A recently added portion of the articles zooms in on the 1990s shift from ‘skyjacking’ to ‘cyberjacking’, featuring data-hostages caught in digital hijacks, and thereby plugging into the debate around ‘information territories’ and ‘INFOWAR’. Conceived by Johan Grimonprez and designed by Pandiscio Inc. (New York), Inflight was published in May 2000 by CANTZ, Verlag (Stuttgart). The project was premiered at the Museé d’Art Contemporaine de la ville de Paris and has since been exhibited in New York and Europe.