BLOW UP

2007|2 channel video projection, 4 channel sound, 10 min.

 

Blow Up is an installation entirely based on a recent airplane event, where a man named Rigoberto Alpizar was shot dead by US air marshals on the basis of immediate interpretation of what he said in that moment:

Just before take-off, a man was nervously walking up and down the aisle, shouting something. When asked later, all the passengers said they had heard him shout: “I have to go out!”, while the two air marshals said they had heard him shout: “I have a bomb!”

When the man ran out of the plane, he was shot dead.

He didn’t have a bomb.

If one slows down the two sentences 300 times, the meaning of the words is lost. What one perceives is the sonic difference between them. Blow up was conceived as a part of the exhibition Dissecting The Ear, which is investigating and exploiting ambiguities of intentional listening and hearing.