No Ordinary Rendition

The no-frills flight lands at Palma airport. It is the summer of 2004. You slip on your headphones and pull your bag from the locker as you leave the plane. Two weeks of holiday await you, ... sand between your toes, cool beers and not really a care in the world. You take the steps down in time to Eminem’s Slim Shady. On the shuttle bus you are squinting, can barely see, because of the blinding sunlight, and feel relief as the sunglasses go on. There are so many planes, and more taxiing to and fro. Time for the first selfie. The summer crowds are big, and everyone is processed quickly. You are through passport control, in the no-man’s land that is any crowded airport. You could be anywhere, waiting now for your luggage at the carousel. You will be out in the open very soon.

That is the scene. Now go back and look at that selfie, with all the planes lining the route of the bus. In 2003 and 2004 the Palma airport was also used by an anonymous looking jet that carried out extraordinary renditions of prisoners from the war in Afghanistan, to detention centres reportedly in Egypt and Eastern Europe. Now, rewind some more, and listen again to that song you had on. It was one of several played to detainees at the Guantanamo prison at super-high volume, along with Barney the Dinosaur and Sesame Street, among many others.

This work was first shown at Mon de Llibres in Mallorca. The image is a large-scale pencil and charcoal rendition of the CIA-leased plane at Palma, and was accompanied by headphones on which to hear a playlist of songs the CIA played at Guantanamo.