Mike Nelson's After Kerouac is not only a shrine-like homage to the era of American culture that the Beat writer has come to represent, but also a rhetorical question in regard to those ideals. In relation to the genre of Mike Nelson's own practice, After Kerouac succinctly articulates what is often the starting point for many of his works; a literary structure translated into spatial structure. The black marks of the tires through the spiraling corridor emulate the single continuous scroll of text that On the Road was typed upon, but also the abstract mark making of the expressionistic nature redolent of painters of Kerouac's era. However, the conclusion is as deadpan as the rest, a cul-de-sac or dead end made with the sum of it's own 'happening' or narrative
