the bird in my heart

During the summers of 2006 and 2007 The Miss Rockaway Armada formed around the idea of taking on a seemingly impossible water journey down the Mississippi River on rafts and motors made of junk we collected in New York City and San Francisco. Jeff Stark and SWOON wrote this call to arms that inspired the journey. In the warmer months of 2006 we traveled from Minneapolis to the Quad Cities. In May of 2007 we returned to the Quad Cities and built three more rafts. We traveled from the Quad Cities to St. Louis where we eventually were stopped by the overwhelming current speeds. After 800 miles of shows and outsider artists meeting folks in rivertowns, we stopped the journey and took most of the rafts apart, returning them to the junkyard. Later, the police torched the boats in the night. During this time I collaborated with Todd Chandler on the Story Project, which you can see here. On the Miss Rockaway journey I facilitated meetings; managed press, boat safety and registration, coast guard relations; and contributed web content. Here is an article about the project published right before we left: New York Times. Here are some of the things we saw and did in roughly chronological order. All photos by A’yen Tran except where otherwise noted.