Trigger
Point
Jamie Crew
Brigadoon The End
Brigadoon The End begins
with a shot from Vincente Minnelli’s
Brigadoon (1954). Sitting
in a bar in New York City,
Tommy Albright makes an excited
call to arrange his return
to Scotland, and the scene
fades into an airplane in flight,
and then into a misty Scottish
landscape. A journey of three
thousand miles is depicted in
four seconds, represented by
a model plane behind which
a quivering sky passes. The
aircraft is remarkably still; the
background alone moves,
meaning the end of the flight
and the beginning can be
reunited seamlessly. The work
turns the clip into a loop, fading
the destination back into
Tommy’s initiating call.
n this loop, the plane never quite disappears, and never quite lands on either side of the
narrative arc. The plane is suspended between America and Scotland, between crisis and resolution.
An airport such as Berlin Tegel
is a place of exchange, of
strange neutrality, an international liminal space. While the development of Berlin
Brandenburg stalls, the place
is doubly liminal, as its working
life is extended, uncertainly
and indefinitely, and
investment floods in for its
temporary continuation.
In the midst of an economic downturn, such places become
more familiar; progress falters,
and spaces are provisionally
revived, their use extended,
their features repurposed, until
such a time as the onward
march of development can
continue. Like the looping
structure of Brigadoon The
End, Tegel Airport presents a
non-space of blurred borders
and vague trajectories, its
resolution delayed with an end
always approaching, yet still
deferred.