In 2014, Anne Thompson started curating artwork on billboards along 1-70 in Missouri. One of her favorite things about the I-70 Sign Show are the weird circuitous paths necessary to see the billboards up close. (Marilyn Minter, “Big Sigh,†2015, Foristell, MO ).Â
The side of the interstate is an unusual place to hang out … (I-70 Sign Show public event, Columbia, MO. Billboard artwork: Karl Haendel, “Plow Pose,†2015)
… and getting there is never straightforward. (Billboard artwork: Ken Lum, “Bindy Sangeet: Employee of the Month / Alia Naffouj: Hooked on Tennis,â€Â 2015)
Anne also spent a year documenting the hundreds of ordinary I-70 billboards between St. Louis and Kansas City, so for the Tide and Current Taxi, she proposed taking a trip to signs around the harbor “It would be a kind of dérive, were we travel TO the sign rather than to the place its telling us to go.”
We decided on Flushing Bay, the body of water that surrounds Laguardia Airport, then it winds into Queens along highway 678.
There were plenty of signs to guide us on a dérive,
but I was also drawn by the memory of a wreck that I explored with Elizabeth Albert back in 2012.
We paddled through a hole in her side to examine the collapsing structure.
I remember thinking back in 2012, that someone was trying to make a crazy floating nightclub.
The dance floor had completely rusted away and now the vessel was stuck to the bottom of the harbor.
The tide washed in and out, filling up the barge like evening guests.
“Why is it still here?” asked Anne, “Why not haul it out and throw it away?”
Maybe the owner still has hopes, I thought.
Back out in the bay, we traveled to the next sign.
There were signs meant for us,
and ones meant for the highway that surrounded us.
There were even signs on the undersides of planes.
Some of the signs were inscrutable, filled with complex and important information.
Our favorite signs were the ones meant to interact with the water,
instruments of measure, where the water itself provided meaning.
Further in, Flushing Bay roared with activity.
On either bank, earth was being sorted, piled,
and loaded onto barges in a cacophony of sound and dust,
a perfect spot for lunch.
We let ourselves be drawn from sign to sign.
Being with Anne, and her idea for this trip, made me realize how many things in the landscape are written on.
I thought it would be hard to disconnect my need for interpretation, but most signs in the landscape seemed to have outlived their readability.
We came to a place between two signs,
that reminded me of J.G. Ballard’s concrete island,
where a character crashes off the highway and is stranded there for months.
He comes across a group of people living there,
and falls in love.
We crossed under highway 678,
and came to the most amazing place of all, a pool of water surrounded on all sides by signs.
We had been traveling from point to point, drawn by signs,
and now all signs pointed directly at us, we drifted at the center.
Later that day, back at the car, I still kept taking pictures of signs.
“Once you start seeing this stuff, its hard to stop.” said Anne.
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