NO AIRPORT TO TRAVEL FROM

In NO AIRPORT TO TRAVEL FROM the viewer meets nine Palestinian teenagers growing up in the West Bank in a 3x3 grid installation of video screens. The statements remain their own, yet form a community of voices and undeniable chorus. In a complex mosaic of voices, fragments come to the fore gradually generating a dialogue between those speaking and listening on screen - and between them and the viewer. testify to curfews and checkpoints, shootings, and statelessness. The chorus their voices forms is repeatedly punctuated by the word freedom: the freedom to live in peace and plan their futures, but also the freedom to go to discos, on school trips, and to invite friends to parties. To have an airport to travel from - and a future destination. With their breaking voices and pubescent faces awkwardly adjusting to adulthood, the experiences the teenagers in NO AIRPORT TO TRAVEL FROM tell of juxtapose the politics dominating their daily lives to appeal to experiences of teenage life many of us go through. Here, as elsewhere in her work, the presence of the artist is a driving force. The highly intuitive approach to the testimony she presents in NO AIRPORT TO TRAVEL FROM is not guided by any census, checklist or questionnaires, but based on personal meetings she uses to generate a direct face-to-face meeting with the viewer. Testifying to curfews and check-points, shootings, and statelessness, the teenagers here also talk about their girlfriends, their moms, and the frustration of not being able to go out after 6pm. The chorus their voices forms is repeatedly punctuated by the word freedom: the freedom to live in peace and plan their futures, but also the freedom to go to discos and school trips – to have an airport to travel from and a future destination. Despite the situation their dreams survive: teenage dreams of travelling the world, being able to invite friends to birthday parties, having a school to go to, of being an astronaut, a pop singer - and being able to sleep at night. On the cusp of adulthood, Charlotte Haslund-Christensen shows us teenagers who are witnesses far older than their years, yet NO AIRPORT TO TRAVEL FROM avoids the pathos of classical campaign imagery of children in a war zone and challenges contemporary stereotypes of the Middle East by giving us the opportunity to listen to voices too rarely heard.