narrated slide show, 2007, 13:20 min
The slideshow “Connections to and through the Air” is another extension of International Airport Montello, the collaborative effort to establish the idea of an existing airport in a town with 65 inhabitants in North Eastern Nevada.
The airport’s raison d’être are two abandoned runways located next to “Montello – the town, that refuses to die”. Officially, the airport was inaugurated in August 2005 with a strike by the entire workforce. Since then, conditions improved. During peak-hours airport representatives in Montello established various strategies to substantiate the temporary and permanent operations of the airport, and took on key positions. Airport managers, luggage handlers, sniffing dogs, air traffic controllers, airport chaplains, runway maintenance workers, ticket agents, security officers and cell phone booth operators appeared and got lost, were hired, fired and promoted. Lots of transit passengers spent many hours at IAM waiting for their next connection.
Using Montello as a model for a terminal, a metaphysical structure of the airport was developed and operated collaboratively via a Wiki engine based website. In September 2006 a private plane on it’s way to Las Vegas used IAM as a transit hub. The passengers experienced a 24 hours layover and tried to flag down a plane, that due to severe weather conditions (sand storm) had difficulties to identify the runways.
IAM was commissioned by Art in General, NYC and supported by NY State Council for the Arts, Experimental Television Center, The Research Foundation of CUNY