I collect aviation and space travel memorabilia. The title for my show is taken directly from a commemorative button of man's first flight around the moon, dated Dec 21-27, 1968. Homecoming was an integral part of JFK's infamous speech that launched the space program; "Sending a man to the moon and bringing him safely back to Earth'. Recent times, with Columbia exploding, have also proved how risky and potentially embarrassing homecoming continues to be. Landing, as opposed to blastoff, which is kind of simple and obvious when it works, has always been more ambiguous and interesting to me. It has been an issue from the earliest days of aviation where daredevil inventors would figure out how to get up in the air with a machine that rested on bicycle wheels, not having the faintest idea of how to get back down safely again, breaking records, but also bones. So it seems to me that the phrase " Welcome Back to Earth" evokes both the thrills and anxieties of life, in a really compact and nicely historical way.

In the spring of 2001, I was on residency in England and spent a lot of time local trains. One hazy morning on the train from London to Bristol, I saw several back lit planes at a distance, appearing one by one, seemingly suspended, completely still in the sky, but obviously in the process of landing. They made me think about physics, illusions, places, non-places, transitions, travel, tourist cultures, leisure economies, the behavioral patterns of the art world, kite flying, ballooning, park games, escapes, exiles, states, stateless-ness. I thought I could talk about ALL of that while simultaneously further the proud tradition of women in aviation.

It has been over 2 years in production now, I just signed off on the technical drawings which will be show at the Kunshalle St. Gallen. The launch date for the actual plane is set to July 11th at the grounds of Compton Verney, a stately mansion surrounded by Capability Brown designed parkland in Warwickshire, England. After this, it is planned to go on an international tour to offset a range of cliched geographies around the world; the Manhattan skyline; the Sharjah Desert; the Swiss Alps, etc. We'll see how it goes. The interesting thing of working in the world of developing aviation technology, is that the vision to lift is sustained, regardless of the outcome.

Cameron balloons happen to be located in Bristol, regarded the ballooning capital of the world. It was coincidentally on a train to Bristol that I first had the vision for 'Plane Landing', but in between, I pretty much sourced the world for balloon makers, helium suppliers, etc. Cameron's produce one balloon ever day, have been leading in the development of special shapes balloons and are involved in a range of special high technology projects, most prominently building the Breitling Orbiter II, that was the first balloon to make it around the world in 1999.

The relationship between the arts and the sciences is fascinating and fluctuating in every detail. Fantasy, vision and pragmatics are interlaced on both sides, affecting, inspiring and challenging each other. The result is an obvious compromise and outcome of a very real and intense dialogue. It has been very slow. I must have visited Bristol 15 times in the last 24 months, for it is not only technology and design you discuss, but the whole framework of meaning and presentation and so on. In projects this complex, it is imperative that the 'vision' on my part is extremely simple and clear, but also completely open ended to the desires and capacities of all collaborating parties. As more and more people are getting involved in various aspects of this production, it adds qualities, flavors and levels to the work, which is just the way that I like it.

I wanted a floating, tethered balloon, that would sit completely still in the sky, hovering fairly low overhead, as in a permanent state of landing. A sculpture in the air, that hardly moves. This is not a challenge; it's a complete absurdity and a paradox. The element of weather is so deeply unpredictable and it is what makes ballooning the vulnerable blissful art form that it is. But there are still so many unknown factors involved and huge amounts of unpredictability. The best balloon shape to sustain the elements is a sphere; the worst imaginable must be a cross—which the shape of an airplane is. The cross- shape in turn was designed to carry 500 ton steel, you fill that with helium, and you are basically defeating all physical laws and yourself. Cameron's have been very careful in promising me anything, but have at least committed to try.

The plane will be inserted in various cliche geographies around the world and offset the landscape, which is how I want to discuss 'location' and invert site specificity by. Local hostship is to be developed on every site so that the 'meaning' of the work becomes associated with any local desires. When you and I met around this for example, you mentioned what's on the Swiss mind at the moment, the collapse of the national airline Swissair and its significance on national identity. In Manchester, it adds to the history of industrialism; In NY, we had a meeting immediately after September 11, to assure the necessity to produce the work (in Central Park!) and maintain its openness, without falling pray to instant simplistic readings and ready made symbolism.

I don't know. It's not really up to me.

In between my Bristol meetings, there is very little for me to do, so to sustain my interest in aviation, I started to collect plane reference material and memorabilia which is collected in the 'Aviation Archive' and that I can exhibit independently or in combination with the plane. As one theme in this archive, I have been looking at how a representation of aviation is processed in popular culture. The 'Aviation Library' is the gathering of hundreds of book with skies and airplanes on them. The contents of the books range from technical manuals to spiritual guidance, cheesy novels and biographies of success. A sky is such a useful image. And you can put type on it and it still looks great. It is funny when I go into a second hand bookshop and buy 25 blue books in 25 minutes. The shopkeepers are always really suspicious, until I explain that 'its art'.

Yes, I hope so. This time an object is the protagonist, but it is intended a similar full on public spectacle and local hosts are already thinking about their frameworks, how to get people involved and what entertainment can be offered on the side to complement the work. At Compton Verney, we will have a garden party with a silver band, at the Manchester Museum of Science of Industry, a steam locomotive to match.

Erro is just such a lovely artist I am happy to exhibit and ride on his work in my show for no reason at all. This particular painting I have a very special relationship to though. It belongs to the Nordic House in Reykjavik, an Alvar Aalto designed center for Nordic culture where I was invited to show my moon landing video in 2000. The painting, which originally was hanging in the director's office, was found back in the Xerox room, put there by the female director who had found it offensive. My video was showing as 'TV' on a monitor, with relaxed Alto sofas around and I brought the painting out on the wall and in public, to match my piece. We now have it on loan from Iceland for this show as well, and I am very happy to see it again.

Regarding the supposingly feminist element in 'First Woman on the Moon'—it's open-ended. I received both congratulatory telegrams from Australian gender studies departments, as well as hate mail from American feminists who opposed my conflation of gender issues with imperialism (The use of the American flag in Holland). I also received severe protests from the Association of Autonomous Astronauts, contesting NASA's monopoly on space travel, and saying that my work was showing the mere impotence of regular people's capacity for space travel, as I wasn't really intending to 'go anywhere' but muck around in the sands. I get all sorts of readings and that is my political point, keeping the ball in the air.

I usually see myself as a hostess in my work. It all about inviting people to participate and make them feel part of it. It can get sinister, but mostly, it is very sweet.

Film, photo, writing, I take documentation seriously and invest a lot in it. Plane Landing is effectively a very ephemeral piece that I don't know the outcome of yet, but that I have invested in already very, very much, so I am naturally concerned with having it documented. The atmosphere and people that are at work when we stage it, is the atmosphere and people you will hopefully find in the documentation as well. Let's see what happens and who will be there.