Aerodunamis
Having now spent an entire day at the Denver International airport, I have had enough time to consider the ways in which the airport is the new metaphor for 21st-century American life.
1. The airport is a placeless space without history, depth, or context.
2. The airport is a faceless space. Anonymity incommunicado.
3. The airport is a voyeuristic space alight with the hum of averted glances and "people watching."
4. The airport is a timeless time. The main sport in the airport is "killing time" while the jet lag resolves and the time zones collide into one another.
5. The airport is a big box in the "ex-urbs." Airports grow on grassy steppes, on perfectly groomed, windswept land, moonscapes.
6. The airport is a continual state of emergency, a police state, a terror alert orange. The airport is where the word "homeland" is uttered most frequently. At the airport, everyone is a suspect subject to intimate search and x-ray.
7. The airport is the maturation of the mall - an enclosed pleasure prison where material needs are met with a continual circulation of disposable goods, consumption, escalators, and big brands.
8. The airport is an institutionalized caste system of front and rear, high and low. The most trivial and ephemeral item can be turned into an object of class distinction.
9. The airport is an Internetted rhizome of terminals and links.
10. The airport is the proving ground for the cybernetic organism, gilded with silicon from head to toe and blinking with lines of flight.
11. The airport is the contest between the machines of material commuting and the machines of immaterial communication.
12. The airport aesthetic is comfortable, spare, designed not for immediate appreciation or joy, but rather to keep traffic moving.
13. The airport features a clear division between the managerial/creative class and the service class, which is marked most clearly by race. This division is represented by the paradox of the itinerant citizen and the stationary immigrant, who converse across countertops like two answering machines addressing one another.
14. There is no dirt in the airport.
15. The airport is the most extreme contrast between absolute boredom and banality and the absolute exhilaration of flight. The seen-it-all-from-an-airplane-window attitude compounds the boredom. This is what it is like to be a god among ant-men.
16. The airport is proof that kids can turn anywhere into a playground.
1. The airport is a placeless space without history, depth, or context.
2. The airport is a faceless space. Anonymity incommunicado.
3. The airport is a voyeuristic space alight with the hum of averted glances and "people watching."
4. The airport is a timeless time. The main sport in the airport is "killing time" while the jet lag resolves and the time zones collide into one another.
5. The airport is a big box in the "ex-urbs." Airports grow on grassy steppes, on perfectly groomed, windswept land, moonscapes.
6. The airport is a continual state of emergency, a police state, a terror alert orange. The airport is where the word "homeland" is uttered most frequently. At the airport, everyone is a suspect subject to intimate search and x-ray.
7. The airport is the maturation of the mall - an enclosed pleasure prison where material needs are met with a continual circulation of disposable goods, consumption, escalators, and big brands.
8. The airport is an institutionalized caste system of front and rear, high and low. The most trivial and ephemeral item can be turned into an object of class distinction.
9. The airport is an Internetted rhizome of terminals and links.
10. The airport is the proving ground for the cybernetic organism, gilded with silicon from head to toe and blinking with lines of flight.
11. The airport is the contest between the machines of material commuting and the machines of immaterial communication.
12. The airport aesthetic is comfortable, spare, designed not for immediate appreciation or joy, but rather to keep traffic moving.
13. The airport features a clear division between the managerial/creative class and the service class, which is marked most clearly by race. This division is represented by the paradox of the itinerant citizen and the stationary immigrant, who converse across countertops like two answering machines addressing one another.
14. There is no dirt in the airport.
15. The airport is the most extreme contrast between absolute boredom and banality and the absolute exhilaration of flight. The seen-it-all-from-an-airplane-window attitude compounds the boredom. This is what it is like to be a god among ant-men.
16. The airport is proof that kids can turn anywhere into a playground.
posted by thebaffler at 7:17 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home