If you fly in and out of Denver International Airport, a heads-up about a new work of art that’s rolling through the concourses. Here’s how it works. An actor walks briskly past the gates wearing a dark business suit. Nothing unusual for airport. Except for one thing: their rolling suitcase is actually a mini-stereo playing classic country songs by artists like Ray Price, Patsy Cline, and Merle Haggard.
The performer passes by, the music trails off, and it’s over. So will travelers even know what they just witnessed was art? The piece’s creator, Humberto Duque admits, most probably won’t. "Maybe for most of them, it’s just going to be something weird," he says. "And that’s what I wanted to do. To do something weird. Like give them a different experience at an airport."
Duque lives in Mexico City. He says he’s “interested in how subtle, simple changes can alter the atmosphere of a space.” He once put a diving board in a city park in Norway. But there was no pool. For the DIA piece, his goal is to momentarily pull passengers away from their sole focus of catching a plane.
Humberto Duque’s performance art piece is called “Lightning Blues Express.” And you’ll have to have an airplane ticket and good timing to catch it because it takes place in DIA’s concourses, twice a week, through July.
Click here to see a video of the piece.
[Photo: courtesy DIA]
