Road Trip Journal #001
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Collaboratively Written by Morgan Rice and Charlie Wilcox
May 2025
At the end of April 2025, Morgan and I took a road trip from Portland through California to Phoenix, and then on to New Mexico, over the course of 8 days and 3,550 miles. In that time, we visited three national parks, one wedding, one hot dog shop, and several roadside attractions along the way. Tied to and reflecting this road trip, I programmed a screening in the From Below of two experimental films centered on couples on road trips. Titled AUTO || EROTO: Road Trip Film Diary Dyads, this screening included The United States of America (1975, dir. James Benning and Bette Gordon) and Double Blind / No Sex Last Night (1992, dir. Sophie Calle and Greg Shephard).
To go along with this screening, I asked Morgan during our trip if she would be interested in keeping parallel journals of our experiences that we could then combine into one written account, a collaborative essay/diary that would serve as the screening’s program. Although the long days of driving precluded a lot of brainpower and time to actually write during the trip, we both leapt into the opportunity to reflect on the trip together.
The graphics in the published essay are taken from petroglyphs we encountered at the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, north of Alamogordo, NM.
