What is Project COSOR?

Project  COSOR is the world's first organization dedicated to the research and analysis of cars on the side of the road and establishing a concerted investigation into the phenomenon of COSOR disappearances.

 

Inspired by ordinary yet iconic visual features of American highways, Project  COSOR engages classic travel marketing materials geared to road trippers to spotlight abandoned automobiles and adjacent overlooked sites, exploring the enduring impact of post-World War II consumerism and materialism on advertising, media, and capitalist expectations.

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Project  COSOR distributes site-specific roadside guides and other tourist ephemera, such as stickers and vernacular context postcards, at COSOR locations across the contiguous United States. Print materials are self-published on-site via a mobile onshore outreach station (MOOS). These materials disseminate the findings of an investigative process that extracts insights from absence.

 

As a digital presence, Project  COSOR reconfigures the visual and written languages of government organizations and the stylistic portrayal of the paranormal to shed light on the paradoxical relationship between democratic freedom and inherent skepticism of the government that is ingrained in American identity.

 

By creating a public-access collection of traveler-submitted COSOR encounters, Project  COSOR reflects on the inclusion process within institutional archives and how such archives and databases may be deployed as weapons of mass obfuscation (WMOs) to uphold neoliberal value systems.

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Project  COSOR is independent, not-for-profit, and committed to the principles of open access. We enthusiastically invite questions, feedback, and opportunities for collaboration.