Brussels Odysseys

For all earlier human beings, gazing up to the heavens was akin to a native preliminary stage of philosophical thinking beyond this world and a spontaneous elevation towards contemplation of infinity. Being in Brussels, the center of Europe and a chaotic crossroads of infrastructure, I’m looking up again, gazing at machines of our own making as they conduct a performance of human invention upon an ancient stage.

The airplane, once a flying box, has in an incredibly short time developed from an astonishing phenomenon in the skies to an integral part of the machine world. It can benefit and it can destroy; it contributes to research as well as progress, inhabiting an invisible liminal space between scientific understanding and imaginative storytelling. In stark contrast to predefined flight paths and three-dimensional highways in the skies, the airplane remains a poetic event, and the magic of flying is displayed through the ephemeral ice clouds formed by aircraft as water vapor condenses around small dust particles, which provide the vapor with sufficient energy to freeze and create ice crystals.

They mimic shooting stars in appearance, but compared to the tales of our ancestors, it’s difficult to fathom what kind of meaning we can find in this precisely calculated spectacle. However, the performances I’ve witnessed in the skies above Brussels are unique each day and specific to this city. These man-made clouds are produced by a network of infrastructure that is organized, planned, and monitored, yet their traces are fleeting, almost like flocks of birds passing by, somehow renewing our romantic connection with the outer galaxy.