Airports today are among the most controlled places in the world, and the most vulnerable, too, not only in terms of security, but also, and more importantly, with regard to human relations, retail strategies and global economies. In 2006 the former Cork International Airport Terminal was decommissioned. A site that saw thousands of passengers passing through arrival and departure halls, duty free shops and customs controls every day until a few hours earlier, finally closed its doors for the last time.

Now, reopened for a few days after years of abandonment in which the site has preserved the traces of its past and has assumed a personal, almost humanlike identity, flickering technology and infrastructure, personal goods and permanently lost property, airport diaries and broken display cases are being reactivated to unfold new life through the interventions and works by over twenty international artists. Turning decay and absence into prospect and presence, the exhibition wakens the decommissioned terminal building to become, for a short moment in time, both an autonomous place and a place where autonomy is negotiated. Intangible to a great extent, the new commissions manifest themselves in the air, in sound, through light or in economic and interpersonal transactions. At first sight almost imperceptibly - a slight pressure in the air, flickering neon lights, LED screens continuously churning out undecipherable messages, conflicting announcements repeatedly played through the airport's PA system, a 70mm film projector projecting through a smashed window onto the runway, a phone ringing all of a sudden at some abandoned counter, and a duty free shop offering almost every video work an artist has ever made, to name just a few of the multifaceted departure points - this singular exhibition aims to challenge our perception and imagination.

Peter Gorschlüter