Procession

Procession is a temporary public art project—a slow migration of twenty flagpoles, each spaced two feet apart, bearing ordinary flags, banners, and pennants that inch across a freeway overpass at a rate of eight inches per hour.

The work explores how people perceive what’s around them—what they notice, what they overlook, and what they never see at all. Whereas most artworks are encountered intentionally—in galleries or museums—this piece reveals itself incidentally, as part of everyday life.

The movement is almost imperceptible. It will take about three weeks for Procession to make its full journey across the bridge. Drivers along the commuter route will have countless chances to glimpse the installation, but they’ll never actually see it move. Some may notice it, some may not, and even those who do might not recognize it as art.

Only regular commuters—those who pass beneath the bridge day after day—will experience the work as intended. Their repeated encounters allow them to perceive the illusion of the flags slowly traveling across the landscape.

Paradoxically, anyone who knows in advance that this is an artwork—including anyone reading this—can never truly see it the way it was meant to be seen.

That tension between awareness and experience is the paradox at the heart of Procession.