The flood plains of the East St Louis region, also known as the American Bottom, is a region of fractures. Varied social, spatial, cultural, and historical realities intersect and collide, interact and challenge each other. The landscape curation project The American Bottom invites to decipher this multifaceted region by focusing on precisely these entangled adjacencies. In the following presentation, Matthew Fluharty speaks about past, present, and future undertakings of this project and points to the confusions, contradictions, and challenges faced in this area.