A story while you fly
AN INNOVATIVE project at Laguardia Airport – in the New York City borough of Queens, the United States – in which flyers can commission a writer-in-residence to write a short story for them for the length of their flight, is about mid-way through, with interesting results.
After launching in April as part of the 2018 Airport Residency Program, “Landing Pages” has given life to more than 30 short stories of varying lengths and subjects for passengers flying out of Terminal A, which serves Alaska Airlines and JetBlue.
The premise is simple. Passengers can visit the “Landing Pages” kiosk and drop off their flight information including flight number and phone number or e-mail.
Once their flight is airborne, writers-in-residence Gideon Jacobs and Lexie Smith will have the duration of the flight to produce a story, poem or illustration.
Passengers arrive at their destination with a story or illustration waiting for them on their phone or e-mail and on the website (www.LandingPages.nyc) for the public to read as well.
The project is a collaboration between Port Authority New York and New Jersey and the Queens Council on the Arts.
For a traveller flying May 3, on flight 2149, arriving at 1.31 pm, Jacobs wrote 374 words of a woman who steps out onto the porch and feigns a cigarette break with her husband, only to be whisked back to her girlhood upon beholding a plane in the sky.
Stories are printed and displayed in real time, and copies made available for visitors to take home as a free souvenir.
Though the writing workshop ends June 30, other projects planned for the 2018 Airport Residency Programme include sonic installations, on-site portrait artists, and an exhibit of a seaplane to pay homage to the terminal's past as a marine air terminal for seaplanes.