Going somewhere? AIRPORTS By J.G. Ballard
[The Observer 14/9/97]
at an airport such as Heathrow the individual is defined, not by the tangible ground mortgaged into his soul for the next 40 years, but the indeterminate flicker of flight numbers trembling on an annunciator screen. We are no longer citizens with civic obligations, but passengers for whom all destinations are theoretically open, our lightness of baggage mandated by the system. Airports have become a new kind of discontinuous city, whose vast populations, measured by annual passenger throughputs, are entirely transient, purposeful and, for the most part, happy. An easy camaraderie rules the departure lounges, along with the virtual abolition of nationality - whether we are Scots or Japanese is far less important than where we are going. I've long suspected that people are only truly happy and aware of a real purpose to their lives when they hand over their tickets at the check-in.
Airports are a number of things to Ballard. The individual is intransit, defined not by nationality, or possessions, but by "the indeterminate flicker of flight numbers". But airports are also the "discontinuous city," the city of the transient, the deracinated. Here, Ballard believes, people are "truly happy."
But here one is also the observer of the crowds who flow forever and who are always just passersby. They are never neighbours, or property owners, or people with some claim to anonymity or privacy. They are by definition random and unpredictable. Specific types or events or attitudes or experiences cannot be anticipated. The passengers offer the spectator the possibility of new experience.
Ballard also likes the newness, what Koolhaas would call the generic quality of airports:
I welcome its transience, alienation and discontinuities, and its unashamed response to the pressures of speed, disposibility and the instant impulse. Here, under the flight paths of Heathrow, everything is designed for the next five minutes. Its centrepiece, and for me the most inspiring in England today, is Michael Manser's superb Heathrow Hilton, near Terminal Four. Its vast atrium resembles a planetarium in the way that it salutes the skies above its roof.
"Transcience" and "alienation" are its hallmarks. But it is exactly these things which make it the perfect site for the type of experience Ballard praises. He wants experience removed from context, pure and without compliations. Or, if there are complications, they are ones which the observer can remove himself from, pass on, become oneself transient. Like De Quincey in his opium trance recalling his ability to "draw from opium" an escape from sad or disturbing scenes. For the observer in the airport, the generic space is its own opium.
