Commission Report: By Neal Brown

We Have a Plane:

Phlight by Simon Tyszko

Introduction

I present the narrative of this report and the recommendations that flow from it to the President of the United States, the United States Congress, and the American people for their consideration. In pursing my mandate, I have reviewed more than 2.5 million pages of documents and interviewed more than 1200 individuals in ten countries. I have sought to be independent, impartial, thorough and non-partisan. From the outset, I have been committed to share as much of my investigation as I can with the American people.

My aim has not been to assign individual blame. My aim has been to provide the fullest possible account of events, and to identify lessons learned. I approach the task of recommendations with humility. I have made a limited number of them.

1) WE HAVE A PLANE
Tuesday September 11, 2007. Millions of men and women ready themselves for work. President George W. Bush goes for an early morning run. There is a urinating, expectorating dawn on the Lancaster Estate, in Fulham, West London: toilets flush and cigarettes are lit. To those planning to travel to Simon Tyszko’s apartment that day, the conditions are excellent for a safe and pleasant journey. The artist has constructed an aircraft wing in his apartment.

2) THE FOUNDATION
The artist has decided 1, with the help of a team, to mount an audacious attack on architectural, domestic and common sense. The project is well funded, the money coming through mysterious bank accounts.

3) RESPONSES TO PHLIGHT
An aircraft wing, carefully inserted within an apartment on a social housing estate in London, is a provocation. Has the artist failed to consider the feelings of those hurt or bereaved by the events of September 11, 2001? Has he considered that he may consequently incur hostility? Has he failed to consider that – as it is his own apartment that he has constructed the wing in – that he is aligning himself, in a very personal sense, with ideas of suicidal auto-destruction? (He has, certainly, created a disabling inconvenience for himself). Although the wing is beautiful, and bisects his apartment with commanding authority, it may be that the artist is both victim and perpetrator of an elegant insult.

4) SIMON TYSZKO AIMS AT THE WESTERN HOMELAND
Speaker 1; Is this real world or just a test?
Speaker 2; No, this is not an exercise, not a test.

5) FROM THREAT TO THREAT
Of course art is always just a test. Real world is cutting your finger when you make art.

6) THE ATTACK LOOMS
Tyszko instructs his engineers.

7) HEROISM AND HORROR
Art, in spite of everything, is still romantic – a kind of heroism. Flight is, thanks to the constrained pig sheds of Ryan Air, not romantic; slurry is horrible. Weather chaos is not romantic, but demonstrating against short haul flights is. Demonising and murdering other people (however wrong it is, and however much one disapproves of it) is purposeful and exciting for those who do it. Constructing an aircraft wing in ones apartment is both heroism and horror.

8) FORESIGHT – AND HINDSIGHT
a) The aircraft in Tyszko’s sitting room has left evidence of a vaporous trail of combusted aircraft fuel and water vapour. It commences somewhere above the broken clouds of Dulwich, descends via Clapham, crosses the Thames, goes over Parsons Green and thus to Fulham where its slowly dissipating line enters via the kitchen window of Tyszko’s home. Inside, the artist sits, perhaps watching television, or reading a book.

b) Further combusted aircraft fuel and water vapour will, in due course, commence a second trail of evidence from Tyszko’s sitting room: the line exiting from the artist’s sitting room window (which faces North-West), rising over Fulham, and then above Hammersmith and Acton. Perhaps Tyszko will be cooking something for his supper when the trail commences, or reading another book.

9) WHAT TO DO? A GLOBAL STRATEGY
It is recommended that biometric entry-exit screening systems should be completed as quickly as possible.

10) HOW TO DO IT? A DIFFERENT WAY OF ORGANISING THE GOVERNMENT
I look forward to a vigorous national debate on the merits of what I have recommended, and I will participate vigourously in that debate.

NOTES
1. It does not seem to be any kind of explanation that the artist’s father served as a radio operator in the Polish Royal Air Force, flying in Lancaster bombers.