Despite early attempts to inscribe the Interstate Highway system in the American tradition of travel and to associate it with the bucolic country road, its development ultimately lead to a sense of estrangement so extreme that the Interstate itself became the only reliable and familiar environment in the country. In this way, the Interstate Highway System has become a catalyst for uniformity and complacency and has masked the diversity, ambition, and creativity that exist along its borders.
This project proposes to use the very instrument of cultural flattening to make evident the American condition of wonderful hypocrisy. This is a country defined by displacement and irreducibility, where people find and define identities and homes. This exhibit is a collection of places and individuals found along the Interstate Highway, who are exceptional but also normal. It tries to show that, ultimately, what is normal in the United States is exceptional and that the most important thing that we have in common is our difference.
Dasha Ortenberg