At Stephan Balkenhol's exhibiton 'Something is Happening' at the Kunsthal, Rotterdam, a sculpture was on show with the straightforward title 'Paper Plane'.
In this sculpture a man is holding a simple paper airplane above his head. This paper airplane has a bit of an unusual, squarish, shape, that's very different from the pointed darts one usually sees paper airplanes depicted like.
The shape of this airplane is however very similar to the design created by aeronautical engineer Ken Blackburn, which earned him the world record for the longest flight time from the 1980's until the early 2000's:
If we believe that Balkenhol was aware of this airplane design, then the pose of the man in his sculpture becomes interesting. It's a relatively passive pose, vaguely reminiscent of how a child with a kite would stand, holding the thing that is supposed to 'fly' high up in the air.
Yet part of the reason Blackburn held his record for so long was the combination of his throwing technique with the design of the plane. He threw the plane nearly vertically with a speed of close to 100 km/h to get it as high in the air as possible. From there the plane stabilised and had a slow descend.
This is no mean athletic feat and the intensity of the movement is of course very different from the idle attitude commonly associated with a paper airplane.
