Public (E-Journal, York University)

Kaminska, Aleksandra

English

Towards an Urban Aesthetics

Horowitz, Gad

Bringing Bataille to Justice

Shah, Seher

HVHS~3H3S
[17]
Perversions of Empire: The Concrete Oracles
The Perversions of Empire series looks at imagery of Empire-building with the construction of
monuments, architecture, and the impermanence of collective symbols. It examines the multiple
readings of spaces and symbols through a variety oflenses. The Concrete Oracles is one of the works
from this series that focuses on the role of monument building, both as relics of colonial markers, and
a means to enforce the idea of spectacle. Using archival photographs, manipulated and reconstructed
[i'om the British Library and the Birmingham Library Archives in England, the work offers studies
into the following ideas: Architect as Empire builder, collective symbols ofauthority, spectacles and
the symbols of power, and eurocentric geometries within the urban city fabric.
Seher Shah


Perversions of Empire: The Concrete Oracles

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

Bobok: From Somebody's Diary

von Schlegell, Mark

Adventures of Deary

Burke, Gregory

Davis, Christine

Introduction
In 1988 Public was launched by the Public Access Collective. As well as publishing this journal, the Public
Access Collective has initiated exhibitions, partnership projects and other publications as a means to
consider the potential of public art to incite debates on what constitutes the public and investigate ideas
of art and culture within the urban context.
The 37th issue of Public aptly titled Public? critically engaged with this history and shifting potential. Tllis
38th issue of Public is dedicated to artists' projects as a companion to these considerations.Together the two
issues mark the journal's 20th anniversary. Whereas the former focussed on a discursive analysis of current
modes of the "public" this issue posits the imaginative potential of the artist project as a catalyst. The issue
features artists whose practice touches upon the paradoxical experience of collapsing distance between
public and private spheres and the expanding gap between inner and outer worlds. What the work might
share is an impulse to create cosmologies. And hopefully Projects for a small world, as a book itself, circulates
orbits and overlaps these differing modalities of the imaginary.
Gregory Burke and Christine Davis


Introduction

Eichhorn, Maria

[7]
MARIA EICHHORN
Mapplethorpe's works have triggered
enduring debates about censorship,
especially in the United States and Japan.
though For diFFerent reasons. ThereFore it
is not surprising that in the present case
this particular book was subjected to
censorship in Japan as recently as 2002.
Prohibited Imports (2003)
The Prohibited Imports exhibition project is a starting point for a critical
examination of the extensive and constantly changing legislation. jurisdic-
tion. and ordinances relating to press freedom and freedom of speech and
curtailment of those freedoms. It refers specifically to the Japanese customs
authorities' practice of submitting imported books to censorship.
Between 2000 and 2002. several parcels of books were sent from Berlin to
Tokyo on the assumption that the Japanese customs would open and cen-
sor them. A selection of these books was shown at the tvIasataka Hayakawa
gallery in Tokyo in May-June 2003. They were:
Act up/NY. Women & Aids Book Group (eel.). Women. AIDS & Activism.
Boston 1990
David Lynch. Images. Munich 1994
Douglas Crimp (ed.). AIDS: Cultural Analysis / Cultural Activism. Cam-
bridge MA 1988
Douglas Crimp. Adam Rolston (eds.). AIDS Demo Graphics. Seattle 1990
Femininmasculin: Le sexe de l'an, Musee national d'art moderne-Centre de
creation industrielle. Centre Georges Pompidou. Paris 1995
Lucy R. Lippard. The Lure of the Local Senses of Place in a Multicentered
Society. New York 1991
Mapplethorpe: Die groCe Werkmonographie. Munich. Paris. London. 1992
Mary Kelly, Imaging Desire. Cambridge MA 1996
Naomi Campbell, Naomi. Munich 1996
Philippa Kennedy. Jodie Foster' A Life on Screen. London 1995
The customs authorities at Tokyo's Narita Airport censored Mapplethorpe:
Die groCe Werkmonographie. None of the other books were censored The
Mapplethorpe book was sent twice from Berlin to Tokyo One copy was
censored but not the other.
The two copies of the Mapplethorpe book were laid open on the upper shelf
of a wall-mounted display case designed specially for the presentation. with
the censored copy on top but offset by approximately the extent of the cen-
sored section. This revealed the details of the same photograph in both cen-
sored and uncensored form so thatthey could be compared. The picture in
question is Mapplethorpe's 1971 photographic work Patrice. NYC
Eighteen other pictures in the book were censored:
Mark Stevens (Mr. 10 Yz). 1976
Helmut. NYC. 1978
Lou. NYC. 1978
Jim and Tom. Sausalito. 1977
Ken. NY.C . 1978
Man in Polyester Suit. 1980
Cock. 1985
Cock. 1985
Untitled, 1980
Self-Portrait. 1981
Christopher Holly, 1980
Bob Love, 1979
Gregg Cauley, 1980
Jimmy Freeman, 1983
Cock, 1982
Thomas, 1986
Pllan in Polyester Suit, 1980 and Mark Stevens (My. 10 :12), 1976
All the censored pictures could be compared with uncensored versions in
the second copy of the Mapplethorpe book as described above.
Censorship techniques in print media. Addition, !eveling, subtraction. The well-
known methods of censoring images and text in print media and books are
blacking out the relevant parts with a black felt pen or using sandpaper to
erase them. Blacking out tends to be used for texts since it is easy to trace
over the lines of text with a felt-tip pen. The sandpaper method is used for
Illustrations, as it is more suitable for rem;wing areas of objects in pictures
and for tracing irregular contours. Both censorship techniques are applied
manually. Blacking out is additive, applying concealing black ink to the print- ¥ ,
ing ink and thereby leveling the black of the letters and the white of the paper
into a black bar or strip. The sandpaper method subtracts, removing both
printing ink and paper fibers. In the case of Prohibited Imports, involving im-
ages, the subtraction method was used. To remove sexual elements from the
pictures, the Tokyo customs authorities apparently used a kind of sandpaper
pen or eraser pen to rub off the layer of coJor from the offset print, aJong with
part ofthe paper's surface.
Hatching replaces details ofpictures. The faded-oUl areas. Abrasion or erasure
produces slight white indentations in the censored illustrations on the pages
of the book. Elements of pictures that have been erased seem blurred and
somewhat ghostly, and their outlines look frayed. While the outlines of the
blank white spaces roughly follow the contours of details that have been re-
moved, the soft hatching overflows into the surrounding area and affects it
too Details within censored areas are partially spared erasure, as is clearly
visible on the page of the open book in the upper exhibition display case
showing the censored picture Patrice, NYC This partial omission (within
the censored detail) and the context of the particular picture make it pos-
sible still to evoke and imagine the details that have been removed. The
bright whiteness of the consistently elongated blank spaces in the pictures
(all parts erased from the lvIapplethorpe book are details from pictures of
male genitalia), further emphasized by the contrast with the dark black and
white pictures, fades out the unwanted, prohibited places.
Reproduction, original De!eted information becomes information. The manu··
al erasures assume the form of "originals" or "unique works" that contrast
with mass-circulation printed pictures and with reproductions The "origi-
nal" collides with the reproduction and draws attention to the processes of
photographic techniques (shooting, developing, printing). The pictorial in-
formation that has been removed becomes information about the processes
associated with forms of production (photograph, book, the work described
here) and reproduction, and simultaneously information about censorship.
Censorship is the method or procedure employed by a state or an organiza-
tion to control content published via media, to suppress and ban unwanted
content and statements, and to ensure that only wanted content and infor-
Censorship also means evaluating and
appraising a piece of work. awarding
it a grade. In psychoanalysis the term
is used to denote the control function
of personality on the border between
conscious and unconscious that controls
and regulates desires and impulses. It is
also related etymologically to the German
loan word "Zins" meaning "interest" (from
the Latin "census" meaning assessment,
assessment of property; property ta xl and
to "rezensieren:' meaning "to review."
Excerpt from an e·mail dated April 14,
2003, from Masataka Hayakawa. Today I
went la the Tokyo Customs Headquarters
to ask about obtaining a list of prohibited
imports under the Freedom of Informa-
tion Law. My discussion with three people
lasted two hours. They said that this was
the hrst time anyone had asked for such
a list and they seemed abit bewildered.
Theysaid if they were to show me a list
of prohibited imports they would first
have to erase the name and address of the
importer and the titles ofbooks men-
tioned in Notices of Prohibited Imports in
accordance with the Freedom of Informa·
tion Act So even if we were to obtain a
list we would only know whether an item
was a DVD, a magazine, or a photograph.
We would not know the name of the book,
magazine, photograph, etc. Do we still
need this list? Imyself am interested in
obtaining such a list even with this infor-
mation blacked out, even though it might
be mea nlngless.
This case of censorship highlights the
whole contradictory nature of legal regLl-
lations and ideas of morality In Japan and
leads one to think that this practice is only
kept up to preserve and maintain a sem-
blance of morality. legality. aad security
mation are propagated and distributed. The aim is to control and determine
the intellectual life of a country. politically. morally, and as regards religion.
The main objects of censorship are news. artistic works. and expressions of
opinion.
The censorship procedure. At the customs authority. It was not possible to ob-
serve the act of censorship. let alone record it. Consequently. the questions
as to who actually does this work and specifically how it is done remain
unanswered. Is it done quickly in a factory-like routine, perhaps even in
the form of piecework? That not a single picture with a sexual content was
overlooked leads one to conclude that inspection was rigorous. Nor was it
possible to gain an overview of all the censored imported books within a
specific period. In response to a request for an overview of this kmd. the
customs authority in Tokyo said that it might be possible to obtain one but
that all relevant data such as detailed descriptions of the imported goods,
titles, names, etc. would be blacked out.
Notice of Prohibited Imports. On November 17. 2002. the Director of the
Tokyo Customs sent the recipient to whom the books were add ressed, the
Masataka Hayakawa gallery, a completed Notice of Prohibited Imports that
was later used as an invitation to the exhibition, The information about the
exhibition (title. dates. venue) was printed on the back. The notice read'
You are hereby notified under the provisions of Item 3, Article 21 of the
Customs Tariff Law that the importation of the article(s) given below 1 and
2 shall not be permitted as it is (they are) found. by the reasons shown below
3. to fall under the Provisions of Item 1-4 of the same article.
In case you are not satisfied with this Notice. you are entitled to file a protest
with the Director of the Tokyo Customs within two months from the day fol-
lowing the date of acknowledgement of this Notice.
Customs Tariff Law. Article 21 (Goods Prohibited for Import). Paragraph 1
(3) reads
"Any goods specified in any of the following sUbparagraphs shall not be im-
ported [ .. ] Books, drawings. carvings and any other articles which injure
public security or morals"
According to this. the imported goods are articles that "il~ure public security
or morals" Books thus designated can either be imported after censorship
or. if the recipient does not agree to their being censored. must be returned
to the sender. Since the idea of the project was for the customs authority in
Tokyo to censor the books and, by censoring them, become a "co-producer"
of the work. the gallery had no choice but to agree to censorship In addi-
tion. it had to pay the authority an administration fee to receive the censored
books.
Law onfreedom ofspeech. Publications. At the exbibition. the two Mappletborpe
books were displayed on the upper shelf of the display case in the manner
described above, vlhile the other books listed were lined up in the lower
part as if on a bookshelf. along with books on legislation. the state of the
law and jurisdiction, freedom of the press. and freedom of speech in Japan.
These books, mainly in Japanese. include works by committed and critical
authors such as Yasuhiro Okudaira and Masayuki Uchino, law journals and
essays dealing with current cases of censorship, standard works such as The
Japanese Legal System: Introductory Cases and Materials edited by Hideo
Tanaka, and the Official Guideline for Customs (Annual Book) that serves as
a guide for customs authorities. Some places in the books and journals were
marked to make it easier for visitors to the exhibition to home in rapidly on
the parts relevant to the project
Start of a critical examination. The project was intended to be the start-
ing point for an examination of the extensive, constantly changing legisla-
tion, jurisdiction, and ordinances relating to press freedom and freedom of
speech and curtailment of those freedoms. The idea was to continue with
further applications and appropriations of various media and further cases
of censorship capable of revealing the sediments of the superstructures of
law that both conceal and mirror the economic and political interests of the
dominant social forces.
~ "1\U\:\\ ~ 11' ~
Other projects ofmine with a similarly en-
cyclopedic design are. Curtam (Denim) /
Lectures by Yuko Fujita. Mika Obayashi.
(1989/1997/1998). Center for Contempo-
rary Art. Kitakyushu. 1998, Filmlexikon
sexueller Praktiken / Film Lexicon of
Sexual Practices (1999). and Architek-
turfUhrer / Architectural Guide (1999).
both projects published in: Maria Eich-
horn. I. Mai Film Medien Stadt / May
Day Film Media City. Portikus. Frankfurt
am Main. 2003 .
•


Prohibited Imports (2003)

Marchessault, Janine

Rovito, Jason

Introduction
by Aleksandra Kaminska,Janine Marchessault,Jason Rovito
Twenty years ago, in 1988, Public was launched by the
Public Access Collective, aToronto-based group comprising
artists, writers, curators, and graduate students equally
engaged in theory and politics. In conjunction with the
publication of the journal, the collective began to curate
exhibitions that utilized urban screens as a means to
consider the potential of public art for both engendering
insightful, collective experiences and for inciting debates
and raising awareness in a city that was quickly privatizing
every inch of shared space. Together, Public and its
founding collective aimed to bring together theoretical
and critical work with artistic practice and collaborations,
a project embodied by the inaugural issue, which was
devoted to pursuing the questions that emerged out of
the urban screen exhibition, Some Uncertain S(gns.
Since that time, PublJ:c has continued its mandate to
investigate ideas, theories, and practices of art and culture
within the urban context-publishing, in the process,
many of the leading voices in the field, including Jacques
Derrida, Michel Foucault, Arthur Kroker, Avital Ronell,
Giorgio Agamben, and Rosalyn Deutsche. And yet, over
the course of twenty years, the landscape underlying
the problematic of the public has changed dramatically:
the internet has emerged as an important space for
consolidating and collaborating under the sign of the
commons; spatial topographies have been transformed
through new architectures of information and media;
temporary autonomous zones have been employed as
liminal performative spaces; non-places such as airports
offer important sites of critical investigation for artists
and activists; counter-publics and scenes have been created
through events both spontaneous and community-based;
and boundaries (national, urban, and personal) have been
rendered at once more porous and more policed.
Public 37: Public? is an anniversary issue; a celebration
of twenty years of critical thinking and creative engage-
ment with the notion ofthe public-as imaginary relation,
politico-juridical construct, and material spatial practice.
And yet, as much as it is a time of celebration, an
anniversary simultaneously invites pause, the reflection of
return. Although we, as editors, sought to honour this
impressive history, we similarly wanted to ask whether
today, in 2008-7,300 days and 36 issues later-the
notion of public, and the journal founded upon it, might
just find itself out of date. Thus, with this issue, we have
not tried to create a retrospective of the rich ideas that
have developed across the various themes and editorial
undertakings of the journal (with the important exception
of a detailed archive of this history, which appears at the
end of this issue), nor have we tried to provide a com-
prehensive summary of the historical debates surrounding
the meaning of the public. Rather, in seeking to capture
the journal's ambition to interrogate and complicate this
very terrain, we have replaced the period with the
question mark: is public still a useful term with which we
can think about culture and politics, art and technology?
10
Does it remain relevant to our efforts to define the
political and imagine new forms of intervention,
engagement, and interference that may transform the
parameters of citizenship, community, and our under-
standings of democracy? In short: does public mean
anything anymore~
In pursuing this task, we sought texts that could be
assembled into a snapshot of the various modes of
inquiry relevant to a contemporary thinking-through of
the public. We thus open the issue with an essay by the
German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk on the Crystal
Palace. Available here in English for the first time,
Sloterdijk's tremendously original interpretation of
capitalism, democracy, and space-emerging from his
epic trilogy devoted to "spheres"-provides an important
anchor to Public's ongoing exploration, rooted in a history
of capitalist modes of production. We have also included
several historically significant essays that engage with the
idea of public in terms of the shared fabric of language,
echoing the sense of the public contained in Hannah
Arendt's work, as something that belongs to both no one
and to everyone. Language as public, as action, contains
the communicative process (namely, translation) that is
perhaps the last horizon of what is held in common,
while being able to express the singularities which therein
arise. We find this spirit equally represented in the starkly
beautiful poetry of Cuban writer Victor Fowler, in the
stubborn human relationality of the short story by
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and in Dorothy Lee's reflections on
forms of work as participatory and communal in the
creation of relationships that cannot be reduced to either
use or exchange value. Likewise, we find it in Alain
Badiou's meditations on love as origin of action and the
affective space of politics. Several of the essays collected
here further engage with the notion of urban mediations,
with public space considered in its mediation through
film, television, and other technologies. A short text by
Vilem Flusser on television in Romania considers the
"communicological" aspects of the mediation between
public and private as a framework for thinking through
the materiality of the virtual in terms of a new networked
intersubjectivity. Flusser, the cosmopolitan thinker par
excellence (a native of Prague who spent most of his life
in Sao Paulo), well understood the particularity of a
politics that needs a public sphere to maintain the tension
between society and state.
As in every issue of Public, we have included thematic
artist projects and have here gravitated towards different
articulations of the boundaries between appearance and
identity performance. Our next issue, Public 38, will
PUBLIC 37
continue our year of celebration and will serve as a
companion issue solely dedicated to artistic works.
Public 37 aims to re-evaluate and reposition the idea of
the public, placing it within the scope of contemporary
contexts and concerns. We hope that this cross-section
of texts will at once help us reflect upon the past but
also look ahead, the product ofboth return and anticipation.
We are grateful to the writers and artists not only for
helping us create this special issue of Public, but also for
challenging us to think, to make choices, and for forcing
us to ask the question: what is public?


Not a member yet

Towards an Urban Aesthetics

Bringing Bataille to Justice

Perversions of Empire: The Concrete Oracles

Bobok: From Somebody's Diary

Adventures of Deary

Introduction

Prohibited Imports (2003)

Introduction

A New Civic Culture?

Transient Media

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