Hub

Hub proposes that the idea of home is today perhaps better expressed as a sense of being between places. Within the dalectical interplay between global processes and local environments, Hub suggests that displacement and mobility itself might be thought of as a new way of belonging. Hub uses the transitory space of the airport—defined by its arrivals and departures—to introduce the notion of disappearance to articulate new ideas on belonging and identity. Hub proposes that we think of the airport as both a type of home and a place of disappearance—not in the sense of vanishing, but rather in the sense of transformation, dis-appearing. Rather than being an "empty" space, Hub proposes that the airport becomes a rich and complex repository of interlacing personal and political histories—a new space of belonging.

"A compelling examination of that most fraught and contemporary of experiences: travel. Occasional voiceovers discussing the fragmented, global subject sound like notes taken during a Homi Bhabba lecture. And yet Hub achieves a visual grain and intensity that persuasively captures the alienating effects of travel in an increasingly mobile society. The final shot of an airplane wing lifting above the runway into a thicket of clouds, accompanied by Di Stefano's dramatic narration, is a small tour de force." —James Meyer, Artforum, Best of 2001