The Public Trust

I've never thought about what the literal definition of that phrase "the public trust" might really mean. Our national landmarks and parks are held  in the public trust, and because of that we can expect -often naievely, that our society will keep a promise to preserve and protect the integrity of that landmark or that landscape.

"You Complete Me"  is in part a social experiment about art, about the public trust, about the willingness of people to cross the threshold from observation to participation. In this project students are to create stenciled portraits of well-known politicians and celebrities and leave them in public places, letting anyone who wishes add their thoughts and alterations to the portraits, thereby completing them.  Although the students seemed pretty relaxed about letting their art out into the world, I had my own fears about the outcome and have a hidden litmus test as to what counted as valid participation as opposed to mere vandalism.

For me some of the selected icons - Harvey Milk perhaps foremost, seemed almost sacred.  If he hadn't died so violently or the facts and details of his assassination  not seem like some cruel ironic joke, would I have felt that this image was so precious? I was afraid of his image being 'vandalized' mistreated or serving as the object of some homophobic attack, but that didn't happen.  On campus, many expressed their confusion about who the portrait depicted (Sarkozy was one guess - not bad).   I was not surprised that young adults were unaware of that aspect of our recent history and that was ok with me, but I was disappointed by the marks randomly drawn on his face. Silly, right?  As the face of gay rights movement I  feared that a demonic homophobia would rear its head, but that didn't happen.

Obama's portrait was another I held to be at least somewhat sacred, but as a living, sitting president I am ok with objections to his policies and the anti-Obama slogans that were written on his image.  Perhaps because I fear that he will be assassinated (joining Milk and Dr. King in the one club no hero wants to join) , the "nobama" written next to his face felt to me like a bit of a death threat, but then I'm more paranoid than most in that regard.

So this project really hinged on trust and was a bet against my more cynical opinions about "people". Did I win that bet?  Let history be the judge.