M HKA Ensembles

Object, 100 x 900 x 500 cm.

Collection: Collection Deweer Art Gallery, Otegem.

'Cayley also made helicopter-like things, although they look more like toys.  For instance, feathers with their quills in a stopper.  When wound up under tension it would fly a good ways, and then when the feathers opened it would drift calmly to the ground.' - Panamarenko

Panamarenko wrote an illustrated text in the early 1970s on the helicopter’s potential to conquer the air. He did not create this version, however, until 1986. He previously built a number of variations which – although they used lifting force and rotor blades (his Portable Air Transport, for instance, and the flying bicycle Das Flugzeug) – were not constructed according to the standard helicopter model with a cabin and tail rotor. He used a pedal-drive for the construction of this 1986 helicopter and unusually long blades to increase the carrying capacity.