Towards a psychogeography of the long-haul flight Part III

In one of the many notes that constitute the Arcades Project Walter Benjamin writes: "We are bored when we don't know what we are waiting for. That we do know, or think we know, is nearly always the expression of our superficiality or inattention". If we are to utilise the banal, to utilise boredom, we need not direct ourselves to the end or finale, but rather examine the situation we are in. Attention needs to be paid to the waiting-itself, not what we are waiting for.
By turning to the conditions of waiting (the conditions of boredom) we turn the material situation that creates this condition. Benjamin concluded his note by writing "boredom is the threshold of great deeds" - and it is precisely here, in the wait and the boredom, that the critique begins. A psychogeography of the long-haul flight will examine the conditions of waiting and boredom that shape air travel and out of that provide a social critique.