Finding the local at the international airport
“Are you sure this is Paris, France?” — In Jacques Tati’s famous film Playtime (1967), an American travel group arrives at the airport of the French capital and is obviously puzzled with the identity of the place. The uniform architecture, with its glossy polished marble floor and endlessly reflecting glass façades, allows no other option than a great confusion among the travellers. The vast emptiness of the airport misses any sign or hint of the desired travel destination.
That first sequence of Playtime holds the mirror up to the urban and architectural utopias of modern rationalism in the 1960’s and humorously illustrates what happens when homogeneity becomes alive; much to the cost of the American travellers, who keep desperately looking for the familiar Parisian historic buildings they know from their travel guides.
Schiphol and the Amsterdam ‘Vibe’
If we were to adapt Tati’s movie to the present, this scene would have to be rewritten. Today, arriving at Schiphol leaves no doubt about where we are. Little is left from the seemingly heartless and dehumanised monotony of airport-architecture. At Schiphol, we literally blunder into the “cultural taste” of Amsterdam and – by extension – the Netherlands. Excessive imagery of windmills, clogs (Klompen), kissing couples, Gouda, among others, spread out over the entire Schiphol Plaza – the shopping and welcoming area of the airport – giving us the assurance, yes; ‘I am [in] Amsterdam’. Literally, we encounter the articulation of a pronounced symbol-driven localism, almost a false sense that we are already in the heart of the city, gazing at Dam square’s Koninklijk Paleis.
Welcome to Schiphol Airport; welcome to the Netherlands (picture: Michael Schwind)
‘Amsterdam’s new sensation’
At Schiphol one cannot only purchase the latest football shirts of Ajax Amsterdam in the fan store adjacent to the brick covered “Rembrandt Café” – a place serving Amstel beer in a cosy atmosphere. Sketches by the Dutch painter Rembrandt are hanging of the wood panelling, resembling an Amsterdam street café, with the exception that it is located in the “Rembrandtplein” in the Schiphol Plaza. One can also visit a smaller branch of the famous Rijksmuseum, exhibiting the Dutch Masters. If that’s not your cup of tea, you could also go to the airport library, holding more then 1000 books of mainly Dutch authors.
Rijksmuseum meets commercial party (picture: Michael Schwind)
Besides cultural institutions, even profane objects were targeted as potential carriers of Dutch symbols, as the cleaning trolley with a plastered bouquet of tulips shows. Not to forget the lonely cow of papier-mâché that unsuccessfully browses the tiled floor – pondering about the painted flat landscape and windmills on its torso.
A sign “Even lekker Landen – Met typisch Hollandse combideals” promises typical Dutch fares to all those travellers who need a snack after an exhausting trip. Besides the typical Dutch waffles, packed in metal cans with blue flowery ornamentation, the variety of supposedly Dutch dishes one can find in the Plaza is astonishing. But to be fair, there are of course exceptions: The American diner “Dakota’s”, offering “an experience back in time…”, is only one such example.
At Schiphol, the quite monochrome terminal is interrupted by several lucid shades of orange, not solely coming from the famous direction signs by the designer Benno Wissing. There is also an array of bright illuminated tourist stores reproducing Amsterdam’s promise of sexual satisfaction and legal highs on various postcards, t-shirts, umbrellas and shopping bags.
More unexpectedly, even international companies gear their advertisement to the city of Amsterdam. Whether it is the poster by Burger King, reading “My BK Amsterdam” or an installation by the car rental company SIXT, consisting of a rectangular field of orange tulips with an BMW cooper right in the middle. Beside stands a mannequin with blond hair and two braided plaits, wearing a traditional white dress with an orange apron and orange wooden clogs – “Amsterdam’s new sensation”.
A Few Notions on the Observed
This “Dutch” phantasmagoria at Schiphol raises questions: Aren’t airports supposed to be global or transnational spaces, international travel hubs, transit spaces as well as gateways to the world, often described as “non-places“, “spaces of flows“, or “heterotopias“, lacking any kind of ‘local’ references? Aren’t we expecting a Tatiesque bemusement, a feeling of placelessness and obliquity about our being-in-between places? In other words: aren’t we supposed to enounter an ahistorical space, culturally and locally disconnected causing “states of ambiguity”?
Looking at Schiphol’s imagery, we find ourselves encouraged to rethink some of these assumptions. Already in 2001, Gottdiener noticed the “distinct feature of place” at Schiphol – established through consumption and other amenities that turn the airport into a “busy downtown district of a large central city“.
Also other airports have established a new aesthetics of domestication. With re-design strategies, it is the abstract character of airports that is tried to overcome and to include the city and country as inherent part. At Sydney Airport, for example, Lloyd observes a “two-tiered design” that consists of a “global space” – fluid and abstract in character – next to a “domestic space” – proximate, concrete and representing the native city.
Dutchified trolley at Schiphol (picture: Michael Schwind)
Clearly, Lloyd’s twofold space is also applicable to Schiphol. Yet we must ask: are the symbols of Schiphol’s “domestic space” authentically Dutch? Instead of two autonomous spaces in independent co-existence, we may also argue for a rather glocalized space, in which the abstraction of the airport space aims at becoming concrete through the imitation of a supposedly local uniqueness. We might playfully think of the Dutch windmill that was hijacked by the “global”. In here, the global uses local references as an anchor to manifest and materialize itself in place. Globalization is therefore not necessarily an ominous process of homogenization leading to an aesthetic single-placeness, but rather a more complex process of heterogenization.
Giving Food For Thought
However, we should not be deluded by these rosy and sparkling hunches. The political scientist Marc Salter, for instance, radically backs away from any kind of feel-good theories in regard to airports. For him, airports are places of securitization, border control and exclusionary practice. Indeed, airports are targets and starting points of terrorist attacks and places where surveillance and border control profiles every single traveller according his or her origin, background, status or appearance.
Even more, we just have to think of the detention centres at airports, where refugees and asylum seekers wait for their forced return flight. The increasing sealing off borders in Europe also takes place and is executed at airports. Looking at airports from this perspective, their new livery of national symbols is not only cynical but should not deceive us from the simple inhumane events that are happening everyday behind their glossy facades.
All this may not be new. Yet, some voices seem to be nostalgic for the allegedly less contentious time of Tati’s Playtime, whose first scene – by the way – ends with the following: The American travel group eventually makes its way outside the airport and is at ease when Barbara, the youngest among the group, finally points to an old lady’s sidewalk flower stand and calls out: “This is the real Paris”.
Share On
