At an abandoned car park, a turquoise one-person space capsule takes off for a flight from London to Istanbul. From metallic everyday noises, the sound develops over the course of twelve minutes into enchanting meditative music, which takes the viewer on a journey to a hitherto unknown world. The installation with five video monitors shows how the spaceship hovers through the streets just above the asphalt and crosses seemingly unreal, computer-simulated landscapes on its way to the Bosporus, the interface between Europe and Asia. Metamorphosis and transcendence are two of the themes that define the work of Hussein Chalayan, who moves freely between the fields of architecture, fashion, and art. Born in Cyprus in 1970, Chalayan fled with his family to London as a result of the division of the country, thus experiencing emigration and rootlessness firsthand. With the work “Place to Passage”, he distances himself from the topicality and short lifespan of fashion, focusing instead on supratemporal, existential themes of life.
