while running,
the bird thought about flying
and how overrated it was
they didn’t know exactly when the running started
or when their legs had grown so tall
there was no point from which it departed
and no goal at all
they heard that, before the war
the land had once been green
way before Monsanto
way before the soybeans
way before the seeds
that still feed
but won’t sprout by any means
on the bare wasteland
once fruitful
once battlefield
all that was left
were the half-buried traces of a story half-sealed
apart from space, temperature and speed
as the only means to not be killed
from the road it got a name, a place, a direction
which the bird chose to follow without objection
despite the high temperature of the asphalt
and the fact that devastation was the human’s fault
the bird fancied some architecture
without ever having been to a lecture
and dwelled in the concrete underground
the bird thought mammals were creatures really strange
so attached to property
and to the stock exchange
treating their needs as a commodity
relying on complex DIY’s
without questioning their policies
their hows or their whys
For this short-term assignment, the candidates were asked to imagine a dwelling for the duo of cartoon characters Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote from the American animated series The Road Runner Show. On the show, the hungry Coyote repeatedly attempts to capture and eat the Road Runner by using ingenious, complex, mai-ordered contraptions. The Road Runner steadily runs along the predictable path of the asphalt roads at high speed and gets away when the laws of physics work in their favour. The traps built by the Coyote are said to have been produced by the ironic Acme Company and usually backfire catastrophically.
For the assignment, the desert landscape where the characters live was reimagined through a physical model. A selection of still frames from the cartoon were printed out and the shapes of the mountain were modelled in clay. The framework of the cartoon relies heavily on the dichotomy between the man-made and nature. The Road Runner follows its instincts by running but still decides to follow the man-made road as its path. Wile E. Coyote, on the other hand, tries to apply complex DIY tricks to catch the bird and fulfil its hunger. Around the road, there are often cues alerting to the danger of abandoned minefields, suggesting the desert had been once a war zone. A lot of the gadgets used by the Coyote are related to war like dynamites, explosive objects and small airplanes.
The dwelling space is imagined as an abandoned underground missile silo with a double helix ramp downwards. The two entrance doors are painted gates, and the confusing aspect of its overground appearance is inspired by the many superfulous roundabouts present in the show. The poem describes the relationship between the characters and the relationship between the characters and the lad.