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From the Public Seminar mission statement: “Confronting fundamental problems of the human condition and pressing problems of the day, using the broad resources of social research, we seek to provoke critical and informed discussion by any means necessary.” This includes provocative art. –Jeff

Either we make history or we stupidly stand in front of it like strangers in front of an alien. GRÖSSERE LEINWÄNDE LÄNGERE HÄLSE, BIGGER CANVAS LONGER NECKS, TOILES PLUS GRANDES, COUS PLUS LONGS will take their parts in the estrangement of mankind. But Realism that reverse the conditions, that decomposes and replaces the social automatics by situations, that will not orientate on them, there is the revolutionary desire, that the order of the world should no longer be violence and control. …

One day I decide to walk down from Penn Station, where I get off the train, to my office at Union Square, determined to soak in all the text that I can see on the streets. The distance I need to cover is about twenty blocks, and I quickly realize that I will not be able to keep up the standard New York walking pace if I am serious about doing this; there is just way too much text to take notice of. First, I have to cut through Koreatown on 32^nd street, a particularly dense section of the city that is bewildering when it comes to the pervasiveness of written signs. I start to heavily filter out the onslaught of textual information, as the majority of the signs are printed in a Korean calligraphy that I find aesthetically intriguing but impossible to understand. I focus instead on the many bilingual signs that give away the mishmash of activities taking place in the area…