MATTHEW BUCKINGHAM
             
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Traffic Report
 

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2005
Continuous color 35mm slide projection with sound, projection screen.
12 minutes, dimensions variable
 
"Traffic Report" looks at the "creative destruction" of the city of St. Louis in light of the federally funded US urban renewal program of the 1960s. A sequence of slide-photographs showing the former neighborhood of Mill Creek Valley, in downtown St. Louis, are projected onto a "floating" screen in the exhibition space. The photographs were made from the inside of an automobile that was being built on the assembly line as Millcreek Valley, a mostly African American neighborhood, was being torn down to accommodate the construction of the Daniel Boone Expressway. An audio track plays back a reconstructed news report linking Mill Creek Valley to the longer history of clearing and rebuilding in St. Louis that extends back to its time as a French colony.