‘FLIGHTPATH TEGEL’

‘Flightpath Tegel’ - Music by John Foxx. Film by Ian Emes (DNA Exhibition, 2009 - a DVD of the films made for the DNA exhibition, including ‘Flightpath Tegel’ will be released by Metamatic before the end of the year).

‘In my youth, I lived in the shadow of Britain’s largest motorway intersection, Spaghetti Junction. It was a thing of beauty, mystery and dreams.

‘It was inevitable that years later, John Foxx’s music would have a profound effect on me. His songs were machine poems to the modern world. He captured a mood that I understood.

‘It turned out that we were both admirers of the great writer JG Ballard, in particular his novel Concrete Island. Ballard commuted every day to his office along Westway, travelling around a certain traffic island to Shepherds Bush. Below that island lay a tantalising world, once deserted, then inhabited by gypsies, now filled with storage units. I believe this could have been the Concrete Island of Ballard’s imagination. Curiously I spied glimpses of this island in John’s video of ‘Underpass’.

”Flightpath Tegel’ is an experiment, a work in progress, an interpretation of John’s music and homage to Ballard’s Concrete Island’.

Ian Emes (www.ianemes.com)

Thanks to everyone, especially Dennis at ArtHertz for making the Apple Store and DNA events such a success. Some of the art for the DNA exhibition is still available to buy, including a limited edition of John Foxx prints - you can see the work here.