Today's
city streets are pitted and rough as if mauled by large and powerful
beasts, and the souls of the people who drive upon are similarly
abused. Aggression and impatience descend without fail upon the poor
buggers who drive upon today's maligned avenues.
We
the Smog Riders of the America Phaltscape (the asphalt landscape)
look often with pity upon our neighbors of the road, they who spend
long hours strapped tightly to chairs which are in turn bolted to the
floors of a tiny metal boxes. After spending years in such torturous
environments, they will have forgotten the satisfaction of moving
their own bodies through space/time using nothing other than living
muscle and some metal tubes bolted to a pair of pneumatic tires.
Rather than the good sweat that stands upon the skin of the bicyclist
after a healthy cross-town slog, the sweat of the car driver will be distressed and foul, an oozing sheen that tends to creep through his furrowed brow as he worries about the skyrocketing price of
petroleum.
The
smog riding street-art vagabond knows as well to avoid paying for
petrol as she does to remain always vigilant of the withering and
debilitating affects of phaltweariness – it is her duty to preserve
the chaotic super-abundance of Street Art, and to record for
Posterity as much of it as she can. To fulfill this task, and to keep
her feet on the pedals, she has learned the limits of her body's
tolerance for dehydration, pain, and exhaustion, and she knows how to
make herself well again.
Given the phaltweariness, the stressed out drivers, and the miles
spend cycling through the phaltscape, how does the vagabond capture
every unique work of street art that is at risk of being torn down as
soon as it goes up? She does not. But she does what she can do,
photographing what pictures might cross her path with the road grit
foulding her mouth and a song filling her heart.
Spes
Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥
John
Paul Roggenkamp
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