2025 EXIT 23

EXIT 23

 

I live on the roof of a small industrial building in Sunset Park in Brooklyn. From my kitchen window, I look out onto the elevated highway of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. This is EXIT 23. Here, two ramps, one from each direction, provide egress from the steady stream of traffic.  Drivers are given little fore-notice, and at times can be seen backing up to the missed exit, a strategy I cannot recommend.

Through the window I follow the ever present flow of traffic, at times rushing by, but more often observed as a slow staggering congested crawl, or the standstill aftermath of vehicular collision. The live conditions of traffic become a meditation, observed like the weather, ever changing and beyond my control. This is a contemplation on the impermanence of reality.

A webcam installed on the roof with this same point of view invites the experience on the meditative conditions of traffic at EXIT 23, streaming live and accessible to the public. For this project, Detective Show X, a street sign is posted in central Aachen (the exact location to be determined). On this sign for EXIT 23 a QR code links to the camera’s live stream. As is customary with highway signage, with the destination is also posted the distance to, which is in this case is 9006 km.

In traffic all vehicular containers are cross-dependent on the movements of others. There is always a play of chance, or perhaps fate, within the collective trust of moving together in unison. It is remarkable to consider how we put ourselves, our lives, in the hands of anonymous others as we speed down the highway, mere meters away from total strangers and whatever might be their inclination or state of mind. Often times in the early pre-morning, unable to or disrupted from sleep, I find odd comfort in the reliability of the large container trucks that occupy the roadway, moving at high speed, one following another, two abreast, a river of deliverables moving steadily up and down the edge of the nocturnal metropolis. And always weaving in and out, acting out a compulsion to risk it all, the late night roadsters dare each other on. They pass quickly out of view.

June 2025