I’m sitting on a tree trunk placed outside the airport grounds for this exact reason and am looking at Runway West. I walked here from the long-distance train station. According to Google, it takes one hour on foot – it took me closer to two. Along the way, I kept stopping to take a photo or took the occasional detour instead of the shortest route.
The further I move away from the terminals, the more the atmosphere changes. While everything at the terminal is governed by speed and order—a regime one would do well to submit to, lest one arouse suspicion—out here a greater sense of calm prevails. Although planes take off and land every minute, it doesn’t give the impression of being hectic. One reason for this may be the vastness of the airfield. From out here, it is clearly perceptible, whereas inside the terminal it disappears almost entirely. It is as if no horizon exists within the terminal, even though everything there is heading toward it—airplanes, passengers, cargo. The terminal opens the way but obstructs the view. This is also evident from the fact that all security checks take place inside the terminal. The feeling of control is ever-present there.
Out here, by contrast, I feel rather uncontrolled. What separates me from the airfield and thus the airside of the airport, is a three-meter-high chain-link fence topped with Y-shaped barbed wire. Small changes in elevation between my spot by the roadside, the ring road running along the airside, and the asphalt of the runway disappear from view. I feel on the same level as the planes, at least as long as they haven’t taken off.
The terminal’s control apparatus seems to have no significance out here. And yet I would probably come into contact with it all too quickly if the thought of climbing over the fence were to occur to me.
Although it’s noisy—airplanes taking off alternate with trucks roaring by—there’s a calm atmosphere. It’s almost as if, at this point, the vacation is already a reality and not just a theoretical possibility. The boundary between me and the other territories connected by the airplanes seems thinner here than anywhere else. At the same time, I know that the path into the interior of an airplane and with it, into these other territories, is more open to me through regular ways than through this one. It is highly unlikely that I could make it from this tree trunk into the interior of an airplane and with it across a foreign border and it is fraught with many risks. I could injure myself while climbing over the fence. I could be discovered and arrested, which would certainly have negative consequences for my research project. I might eventually make it to an airplane, but probably not inside, because it would likely only be accessible via a passenger bridge, and I don’t have a boarding pass to show. In the worst-case scenario, I could even die trying to get inside the plane, for example, by getting too close to the turbines. All in all, the sense of proximity and ease presented to me from my seat on the tree trunk is an illusion.
In contrast, the walk through the terminal seems made for me, or at least for someone like me. Because I have a job, I have the money to buy a plane ticket. My nationality confirms the legitimacy of my presence.
My white skin makes me appear blameless and above suspicion, and my clean criminal record would do the rest should I ever come under suspicion. If I adhere to behavioral rules, business regulations, and sovereign rights as I make my way through the terminal, all gates will open to me without my having to fear punishment, injury, or death. The same cannot be said for climbing over the airport fence. Unless circumstances change drastically, there is no need for me to take such a step. Were I someone else, however, this assessment might look quite different.
Anna Derriks is an architect, photographer and researcher. Her project explores the spatial and aesthetic form that the national border adopts for different types of travellers at Frankfurt Airport. In her search for the border, she moves both through and around the airport, encountering glass walls, fences and sensors along the way.