woven welcome

The airport has always existed as a transitional space - a portal between experiences that encourages us to carve out an ephemeral alternate reality while in transit.  Time is experienced differently in an airport, we find ourselves released from our normal attitudes and habits, there is a seductive availability of anonymity, we may find ourselves contemplating odd gift shop merchandise, talking with strangers we might usually avoid, or even spending hours in unaccustomed silence and observation.  Basically the airport has existed as incidental site for temporary autonomous zones on a micro and personal scale.

Post 9/11 with the advent of TSA and homeland security a more specific alternate reality has asserted itself within the vortex that is the airport.  The insinuation of suspicion and the invasion of privacy embedded in security protocols have paradoxically made anonymity feel like a detriment “if they knew me they would know I’m not a threat”.  This encourages an exaggeration of the subconscious self-censorship and general self-consciousness that is prevalent in the world outside of the airport “Best I don’t draw any attention to my self”.

 When we decided to weave a welcome mat at the airport the impulse came first from wanting to fill our time in some appropriate fashion, as we would be meeting people coming to the Open Engagement conference over a period of many hours with many gaps between arrivals.  We knew immediately that we wanted to ask for help from others at the airport no matter what we did, and a welcome mat surfaced quite quickly as a project that would make sense, as being situated outside of the security checkpoints the people we would encounter would likely be there to welcome someone just as we were, and could employ the mat to welcome their friends and loved ones.