De planes! Welcome to Fantasy Airport.

I’m in a rebellious mood today – I have a bunch of work and don’t want to do it. So I’m putting up flotsam and jetsam:

This artists’ collective have taken over a proto-ghost town in Nevada and created a semi-functional airport. They took over an abandoned air strip and built up an entire terminal complete with gift shop, chapel, and food court. It’s an extremely detailed art installation that sees no air traffic whatsoever. Sometimes the workers go on “strike.”

I really like this idea; it’s like a concept-art version of working at Disneyland. Or a traveler’s Burning Man. It’s not like they are just doing the obligatory art piece on Privacy and Security in a Post-9/11 World, give us your damn shoes, blah blah blah. I love it so much I’m willing to forgive their dreadful typos. Here’s my favorite quote from their website:

The whole airport may be regarded as a transit lounge, as a waiting-room between two places. The airport itself is not considered a place. All of us have witnessed discussions about whether one has actually visited a city or country when one has only seen the airport, and in the majority of cases, people agree that one has not. Upon entering the airport, one enters a cultural void - a third, global culture.”
from: In limbo: Notes on the culture of airports, by Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Runar

I had always thought that we could never understand what our “global culture” was until we encountered extraterrestrial life—like we’d need that juxtaposition to figure out what is unique to humanity versus, you know, what everyone and their three-headed blob sister from Zarcana 7 are doing. But I think I just changed my mind.