CONCORDE
Wolfgang Tillmans
Concorde is perhaps the last example of a techno-utopian invention from the sixties still to be operating and fully functioning today. It's futuristic shape, speed and ear-numbing thunder grabs people's imagination today as much as it did when it first took off in 1969. It's environmental nightmare conceived in 1962 when technology and progress was the answer to everything and the sky was no longer a limit. It flies at more than double the speed of sound, at a maximum of 2 333km/h in an altitude of 16 000 m. It's empty weight is 85 900kg and it takes up to 94 750kg fuel at a capacity of 100 passengers. Due to rising fuel prices and environmental pressures, supersonic travel never really became a reality. Only fourteen Concordes, excluding prototypes, have ever been built and were flying between Paris, New York and London in just three hour and half. For the chosen few, flying Concorde was a glamorous but cramped and slightly boring routine whilst to watch it in air, landing and taking-off is a strange and free spectacle, a super modern anachronism and an image of the desire to overcome time and distance though technology.
