Paper short abstract:

Paper long abstract:

Contemporary air travel is a means of transformation. In passing through the spaces of air travel, humans transform into tourists, a process that I will argue relies upon an airport's use of space. Airports produce and perpetuate fantasies about air travel, while making use of the same tools to exert control over the citizens of airport space. This paper will explore the intersection of tourism and airport space by examining airports as tourist destinations in themselves, through the uneasy relationship of the contemporary tourist with the liminal space of the airport. I am interested in questioning how airports both exploit and mask their airportness for the transient tourist (governed by the idea of a destination at the end of the flight) and the tourist of airport space (wherein the airport itself becomes the tourist objective).

This paper will describe how airports make use of the "strategic play of hide and reveal" proposed by the originators of the panel. How does airport space mediate our experience of tourism? To what extent can we approach an understanding of airports through airport tourism? What knowledge about the contemporary world might be gained by conducting research on the spaces of airport tourism? In addressing these questions, this paper will draw upon sources such as: Marc Auge's writing on airports as "non-places," sleepinginairports.net and other websites that allow travellers to exchange anecdotal guides to airport space, and Bruno Latour's work on the interaction of human and nonhuman—particularly the adoption of the term "black box" from the world of aviation accident investigation.

E-paper: this Paper will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed

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