ALGIE: The Day Pink Floyd's Flying Pig Escaped and Terrorised British Airspace (Video Essay)

How does a symbol of hope end up grounding flights at Heathrow? In December nineteen seventy-six, Pink Floyd floated a giant inflatable pig over Battersea Power Station to photograph the cover of Animals. For one afternoon that pig stopped being a prop and became a real aviation emergency, drifting at eighteen thousand feet over the English coast while air traffic control filed reports about a flying pig. So when you set a symbol loose into the sky, who is really in control, the artist, or the wind? Jorge Lucio de Campos