Richard Ankrom is an artist whose work deals with making highways signs. While living in L.A., Ankrom became fed up with the dangerous and unorganized freeway system. He started to create and hang highway signs designed to help drivers safely navigate the freeway. This is unusual and perhaps contrary to De Bord's plan for the derive, because Ankrom was creating art to help people better navigate within the already created pathways. However, once the city learned about the sign (it took them 9 months to figure out that his art was on the highway since it looked so realistic), they had it removed. It seems that signs that helped clarify and make freeways safer were actually against the goals of the city, which is what motivated me to post about Ankrom in the context of this assignment.
Ankrom refers to his work as guerrilla public service. His art works within and against the system at the same time. His website and this article will give you more information about his work.
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