Clintonian disinvestment in the public sector resulted in the worst of all worlds: degraded public services, unaccountable private contracting, and further erosion of trust in government. Thirty years of neoliberalism paved the way for the outright defunding unleashed under the Trump 2.0 administration. Despite all, there remains a public sector, especially in the large urban centers where thousands of workers on the government payroll perform the tasks required of a functioning city. How can art workers, who typically operate outside the world of public administration, humanize those who serve the public in an era of unprecedented hostility?

Emilio Martínez Poppe and Jameson Paige tell their Philadelphia story in the following conversation. Martínez Poppe and Paige have been working together since 2022 to bring 

 to the Philadelphia City Hall Courtyard. The project began as a series of photographs and evolved into a large-scale public art installation with a robust series of programs this summer, a second long-term installation in the Municipal Services Building opening this fall, and a forthcoming book expected to release next summer. 


artist Emilio Martínez Poppe and curator Jameson Paige in conversation. Photo by Areksun, courtesy of Mural Arts Philadelphia.

in the City Hall Courtyard of Philadelphia earlier this summer, a public art project invested in the social, aesthetic, and political dimensions of the public sector. Your project critically engages the lived perspectives of city government employees in Philadelphia by creating a conversation around their office window views, the scaffolding that erects and maintains the city’s built environment, and how employees consider and contend with their positions as civil servants. After being delayed for nearly a year, the project became public in the immediate aftermath of the Trump administration’s fervent dismantling of large swaths of the federal government. Though we didn’t anticipate this gut-wrenching backdrop to be the context for 

, it nevertheless animated every conversation, program, and conceptual framing of the project. It was the elephant in the room at every juncture. The federal government under the president’s administration continues to exert unprecedented control and disruption in the lives of Americans, so while that has only become more sinister, I’m increasingly thankful that 

 felt like a substantial moment to pause and raise a flag against what is happening in the country. To do this from the courtyard of Philadelphia City Hall was a powerful moment of site-specific amplification, to speak as a chorus in complex opposition to the dismantlement thrust upon us.

The timing made the concerns of the work readily palpable and urgent. The courtyard wasn’t the first site we had considered. We found our way there through a series of conversations across city agencies as the project evolved into its final form. Ultimately, the courtyard was where it was meant to be: the geographic and legislative center of Philadelphia, where the voices and views of city workers could be seen by thousands in one of the busiest parts of the city. This became the motivating narrative force of the project in the aftermath of the election. But this wasn’t a novel context for the work. Around when I first started thinking about this project at the end of 2020, Trump issued an 

 that aimed to reclassify tens of thousands of top-level federal employees making them eligible for political dismissal. Biden 

 that order at the very beginning of his presidency, but when Trump was reelected, he 

 it with the help of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency. I ended up taking all the photographs for 

 during the Biden years, from first capturing traces of pandemic-era hybrid work to the very last taken only weeks before the 2025 inauguration. What began as an analysis of a type of position I would go on to fill as an employee of New York City Department of Cultural Affairs became an evolving conversation about the stakes of public sector work in general.

I was able to get extremely close to your project through my own curatorial process, and for me, 

 opened up rich, complicated space for wrestling with what we value at a real human level, through the lenses of labor, history, and spatial politics. It’s a project that has changed me, how I view the city, and how I understand the magnitude of the United States in crisis right now. I’m curious, now on the other side of the biggest parts of the project, what are the gifts 

 has given you for seeing this unprecedented moment in American history more clearly?

 and I am moved to know you feel this way as well. Developing this project in the time I did, and through the intellectual context of the Whitney Independent Study Program—where we had our first studio visit—provided me with a focused direction for my own artistic practice. What became clear to me is that my role as an artist is to champion workers’ lived experiences, to humanize organizations that are being vilified by revealing their complexity and nuance, and to host conversations across fields of cultural, political, and historical analysis to better understand the present moment. It is here, in fact, that aesthetic innovation is forged, in revealing the state of the people and embracing artistic production as a system of transformation rather than an assertion of taste. Central to this is the human need for dignity and recognition in regards to our labor. How has this project changed your approach to working on public projects?

Emilio poses with Toni Curtis-Ford, an organizer of the Philadelphia Municipal Employee Choral Ensemble and a photograph of her office window at the opening reception of 

. Photo by Areksun, courtesy of Mural Arts Philadelphia.

It’s probably obvious, but doing a project like this that’s so invested and integrated into the social realm requires flexibility. Your decisions as an artist are in some ways up for discussion and the same is true for me as the curator, though to a lesser degree. Across the making of 

, the scope of the project was quite elastic while maintaining its anchor components of photographic views. We changed the architecture of the installation, the arrangement of components, and even added elements like the interviews and questions well into the project. All of these decisions felt collaborative. From moving as a team across the more than twenty municipal agencies we visited, to shaping and moderating public programs. There are times when curating feels entirely like a project of interpretation and padding, and then there are less frequent opportunities like 

 where I really felt invited into your practice in a deeper way. I learned so much regarding the nuances of holistically supporting an artist. I’m not sure the project could have manifested itself with the depth it had without that trust between us.

Absolutely. I felt that when you received my ideas you would elaborate on them as a way to think through their materialization, making a dynamic space for developing the work conversationally. This was the case with the decision to use scaffolding as the installation armature—a major pivot that came out of a production issue we just couldn’t resolve with the previous approach. In the end this form held so much symbolic force, its oscillation between being visible and invisible—an apt representation of public sector labor—and its evocation of the urban changes afoot in Philadelphia, inspiring hopefulness and flagging latent anxiety all at once. You saw this potential and we ran with it. Our conversations around this developed into a logistical choreography, applying my numerous 3D renderings alongside your work securing vendors, permits, and plans. But it was not only in this realm that our fluid dialogue made the process so dynamic. It was also, as you mention, in our arrivals and outreach.

Throughout the run of the show, we would keep getting comments about how captivating our friendship was through our co-hosting and banter. But it was not only during the presentation of the work that our complementary ways of working showed off. You could say it was in each visit to an agency, where my art-making took place. The experience of taking the photographs and conducting the interviews were rich because of the tone we set. Our trust was the platform and it welcomed others with open arms. I believe this played a huge role in the honesty of the testimonies and the success of the programming, where our guests truly took ownership of the platform. I’m thinking here of the Municipal Employee Choral Ensemble members showcasing their talents in song, poetry, and performance, as well as Public Sector Office’s workshop applying their own 

 within the public sector to the installation.

Art is a system of relationships—this is something I always teach my students. It is a way to make life together, to find poetry in the way we imagine ourselves. Art-making is also work. It relies on historical, institutional, and social conventions that we follow in its production. Therefore, it also provides opportunities to create new meaning out of our work as we reflect on the work taking place around us. What are the ways in which your curatorial practice has encompassed tasks beyond what is considered “curatorial” as such? Have there been moments where you were surprised by the scope?

The Municipal Employees Choral Ensemble performs one of their “City Hall Serenades” during the run of 

. Photo by Albert Yee, courtesy of Mural Arts Philadelphia.

You’re bringing up something that I think we often take for granted in socially engaged practices, which is simply that the social is really the center of making. This is something that I think is certainly “curatorial” but I don’t think is typically emphasized to the degree that we endeavored with 

. I’m really happy with the pace we built that led to a serious momentum, followed by slower contemplation. In my experience, many temporary public artworks announce themselves in public space and then just as quickly disappear. From a curatorial and artistic standpoint, we structured 

 as a cresting wave that continues to ripple, having a more gradual dissipation after its initial impact. Now, after the courtyard, we are still one foot in the door of city government with an amended version of 

 on long-term exhibition in Philadelphia’s Municipal Services Building. There’s also the forthcoming book project that will function as a reader for the project’s conceptual arcs—photography, the city, labor, artistic intervention, etc. These lasting afterlives provide anchors for us to come back to, a foreground to reignite these ongoing conversations without needing to start from scratch.

One element of 

 that I’ve been yearning for in work I’ve seen since, whether publicly sited or institutionally bound, is the kind of porosity that certain sites not only allow for but actually encourage. It’s one of the pleasures and challenges of curating projects in public space. The City Hall Courtyard is one of those sites in Philly because it is the literal geographic center of the city and the symbolic center of the city’s power. For there to be a public space—historically a commons—at the center is significant. We were able to leverage this by keeping our public programs open to the courtyard’s wills. The space is for everyone, and we leaned into this condition. While a public talk was delivered, young people passing through got on stage and danced at a transitional moment in the program; in another instance the wireless microphone picked up a far-off street performance of Adele’s “Someone Like You.” These pepperings were met with kindness, understanding, and laughs, both from the speakers and the audience. Intervention became a logic of the installation, an invitation for people to engage the work who otherwise might shrug it off. It further emphasized the “public-ness” of not only the project’s material presence, but how it comes to life.

Those moments were incredible. They were amplified by the scale of and contrast with the work. That courtyard is already bubbling over with the energy from its history, the subways that run underneath it, the grand enclosing walls of City Hall. By adding to the already charged waters of the site, we contributed to even heftier swelling tides of the courtyard’s pulsing public persona. We had to learn the rhythm and ecology of the courtyard and its characters—we too became courtyard characters during that month since we were there almost every day. This was in part due to the amount of events we programmed, but also to the amount of upkeep the installation required. We often ran into colleagues and friends who worked in City Hall while holding a screwdriver and pliers. 

 was living and breathing, much like the courtyard itself. Another notable intervention was during educator and organizer Paul Prescod’s lecture in “The Labor of the City,” when someone he knew was passing through the courtyard and shouted out, “PAUL PRESCOD IS A MAN OF THE WORKING CLASS” during his talk, clearly thrilled to see him on stage. An incredible moment that also reflected how remarkable that panel was in that space, as tensions were growing in the lead-up to Municipal Union contract renegotiations. Paul raised the debate against municipal unionization during the 1930s Garbage Riots: How could public sector employees be so selfish to unionize when they are doing the essential work of society? Well, if the work they do is essential to reproducing society, shouldn’t they have dignified wages, dignified retirement, good benefits, just like all workers should?

Paul Prescod speaking at the Labor of the City panel discussion. Photo by Areksun, courtesy of Mural Arts Philadelphia.


I think for me, a lingering question from the project is around the way work is organized, how labor is delineated, and Philadelphia city government’s perplexing treatment of its own employees, who are also its citizens. This becomes clear in the city’s unionization of public labor through AFSCME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) and the separation of kinds of work by what’s historically been called white-collar and blue-collar. Blue-collar workers, often frontline and public-facing, are a part of District Council 33, while white-collar workers, usually office positions insulated by a layer of bureaucracy, are a part of District Council 47. In “The Labor of the City,” Julie Zaebst and Prescod addressed this bifurcation as a problematic starting place for organizing. For example, Julie, a public librarian in South Philly, is a member of DC 47 and yet works mainly with members of DC 33. Her interests as an employee are represented differently than her immediate colleagues, despite them working in the same building. There’s a dissonance between what the unions were set up to do and the form that they actually take.

It was an incredible low after closing 

 to witness District Council 33’s strike in July, where sanitation workers, 911 dispatchers, water department, among over 9,000 workers saw no other means to negotiate a contract with the city other than by striking. Despite their absence being widely felt and their efforts supported by a majority of Philadelphia residents, DC 33 ended their strike after eight days with little to show for it. The mayor’s administration refused to meet anywhere close to the union’s demands, and barely budged on their initial offer of a minimal wage increase. All the while, office workers in DC 47 went to work and were discouraged by their union leadership from striking in solidarity at the risk of jeopardizing their own contract. And on the heels of all this, there’s a funding crisis for SEPTA, the city’s public transit system, that’s threatened elimination of many transit routes and been confusingly volleyed back and forth between the municipal and state governments. 

 tapped into these impending crises and engineered space to discuss them with a sharp criticality. I’m glad we were able to respond so urgently, but I’m discouraged by the larger direction the city seems to be going in. How do you make sense of municipal labor’s contradictions and the events that have shaken Philadelphia’s civic infrastructure this summer?

Lisa Parks from the Municipal Employee Choral Ensemble holds up a STRIKE sign during a rendition of “She Works Hard for the Money,” where “she” became “we.” Photo by Areksun, courtesy of Mural Arts Philadelphia.

It was the day after we finished the installation in the Municipal Services Building that DC 33 went on strike. I’m glad we could give Julie and Paul a microphone to directly address the disparities Philadelphia city workers experience. 

 not only spanned a presidential election but also a mayoral election that marked the sharp return to fully in-person work for city workers. On the other hand, you had sanitation workers who never had the choice of hybrid work during COVID, who stood behind Mayor Cherelle Parker’s new in-person requirements. It was so disheartening to see this trust in her directly undermined when she refused to meet their demands. Last year also saw the 

termination of PAFA’s degree-granting programs

. The massive economic blows Philadelphia has faced have been substantial, and the city’s largest employer has yet to commit to PILOTS, i.e. payments in lieu of taxes, a fact Paul reminded us of in his lecture. To see an institution which is supposed to fulfill a public purpose operate as a capital-accumulating corporation in the poorest large city in the U.S. is deeply disappointing. If the institution refuses to assume its responsibility, it may be time to apply pressure on its tax-exempt status, as Mayor Ed Rendell did in the 1990s, causing UPenn to commit to PILOTS for the decade.

To know our history is to know the tools at our disposal to understand the myriad contradictions we face in the present. Government is our technology to shape life and to live through. While it may appear to us as a fortress or an obtuse system, it is in fact fluid and shifting. It is made up by us—for better and worse. It is something to shape and that more of us should get to participate in. This is something I heard repeatedly in conversation with the city workers I interviewed, the commitment to empowering more people to use city services, to having more voices heard. As a NYC city worker, I am inspired to see the 

 movement to divest our pensions from Israeli securities as an example of this active participation in the civic infrastructure of our own working conditions. To be a civil servant is to stand in resistance to the terms of domination, of austerity, of American authoritarianism. We call for a government that looks after the interests of working people, not the profits of billionaires.

 text panel highlighting an excerpt from one of the 40 interviews Emilio conducted with Philadelphia municipal employees. Photo by Areksun, courtesy of Mural Arts Philadelphia.

Labor is the glue for holding the project together, while at the same time it considers the implications of that very labor on how we construe and construct the city in our imaginations. For me, this notion presents an opportunity to make known our own institutional conditions and abilities to tend to this kind of work. Though I’m not a civil servant, I often work proximate to municipal employees. My curatorial work through Mural Arts is often in dialogue with public institutions and infrastructures. This is a unique curatorial vantage point in that the site for my work is often relationships rather than a defined space. While of course site, history, spatial politics are all on the table and come into view, a necessary and equally significant factor is the ongoing work of tending to the social and political implications of making public projects. I wonder, as you move into a new phase of this project and also into other bodies of work, how you would frame your practice and its concerns. What is the material you’re tending to?

Over the course of the installation, I continued to hear from visitors how important it was to read the perspectives included in this installation, to feel reflected in them, to find oneself in a view. It is a privilege to be able to produce such encounters, to be a bridge between municipal and non-municipal workers in the same city, and in the case of 

, to aid in humanizing a sector which is too often abstracted. It should be no surprise that the diverse experiences of residents across the city are shared by those working in its municipal government. A city’s public sector is its community. As Sandra Lindsay from the Municipal Employee Choral Ensemble writes in her poem performed during the choral performance of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”:

WE’RE A VAST ARRAY, A KALEIDOSCOPE OF PEOPLE
GOD’S UNIQUE CREATION
WE SHINE AS MULTI-FACETED RAYS
A WOVEN FABRIC COMPRISING THIS NATION

A government is for the people and by the people. A truth that must continually be insisted upon. That is our duty, especially in moments like this, where our public sector is being gutted, torn apart, attacked, and mobilized against the very people it is meant to serve. Will we let the impunity, violence, and hatred toward working people define what a government of the people and for the people is going to be? What actions will we take to wrest back the power to define what is ours? The questions are similar for cultural workers like ourselves. We must always demand that our institutions uphold the values they espouse, but especially in moments when the governing regime is doing everything to the contrary. Cultural workers, like civil servants, stand in resistance to the terms of American authoritarianism and domination. As we look to the years ahead, the market-based system of artistic production is completely inadequate to address the challenges we will be facing. In fact, as we have seen, the traders in these systems are complicit in the extraction and genocide of people, from Philadelphia to Palestine. Art belongs to the people. As public practitioners we must continually work to mobilize art’s capacities to unite, and to see a future out of this moment.

A visitor looks through the installation as License & Inspections Commissioner Bridget Collins-Greenwald delivers a speech at the opening reception for 

Emilio Martínez Poppe is an artist who is concerned with the right to the city and the struggle of public memory. Through a social and research-led practice spanning photography, sculpture, text, and installations, he explores the spatial mechanisms and ideological conditions that reproduce state and capital infrastructures. Martínez Poppe recently installed a large scale public artwork in the courtyard of Philadelphia's City Hall. He has previously exhibited work at Petrine, Paris; the Queens Museum, New York; and de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam. Martínez Poppe was a studio fellow in the Whitney Independent Study Program; earned an MFA and MCP from the University of Pennsylvania and a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art; and is a member of BFAMFAPhD. He is a member of the Pinko collective and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Graduate Communications Design department at Pratt Institute. His work has been supported through artist residencies at Abrons Arts Center, Pratt Institute, NEW INC, and SOMA Mexico, and through grants/fellowships from the The Laundromat Project, The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, and PennPraxis. Martínez Poppe received the Charles Addams Memorial Prize and the Paul Davidoff Award from the University of Pennsylvania.

Website

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Emilio Martínez Poppe

Jameson Paige is a curator and writer based in Philadelphia. He is interested in contemporary art’s engagement with spatial politics, history, negotiations of identity, and problems of representation. His research looks at these issues primarily through art’s flirtations with queer, critical race, urban, and affect studies. Jameson has presented his work nationally at Bryn Mawr College, the College Art Association’s Annual Conference, Northwestern University, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and the Maryland Institute College of Art, among others. Recent exhibitions have been presented at Fjord, Philadelphia; as part of BIENALSUR at la Universidad de las Américas Puebla, MX; the Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City; and the Sullivan Galleries, Chicago. His writing has appeared in 

. He has held previous positions as Curatorial Fellow at the Institute for Curatorial Research and Practice and as Assistant Curator for the Envisioning Justice Initiative in Chicago. He is currently the Curator of Public Practice at Mural Arts Philadelphia and teaches in the School of Art, Design History and Theory at Parsons School of Design.

Jameson Paige

A conversation between artist Emilio Martínez Poppe and curator Jameson Paige reflecting on their process, friendship, and the resonance of 

No Privacy, No Public

Civics Lessons: Learning How to See Philadelphia's Public Sector

 is A Blade of Grass’s outlet to collaborate with practitioners and learn through their perspectives. While we understand that our communities have long been in a state of crisis, the inauguration of the current political administration accelerated these crises with a strategy to overwhelm constituents. With the ground shifting rapidly throughout the first half of 2025, our conversation with artist and writer Dan S. Wang reminded us that moments like this are not new to communities and elders who have long engaged political struggle.

As guest editor of this year’s issue of 

, Dan brings a rich history of organizing with artist collaborators and collectives and contributing to social movements throughout the Midwest and beyond. Dan has produced work with artist groups Compass, Madison Mutual Drift, and Red76, and he was a founding member of Chicago experimental space Mess Hall. Dan’s recent residency and exhibition 

 at Dartmouth College explored political memory, revolutionary strategy, and leftist failure. In 2022, Dan co-edited with Anthony Romero and Daniel Tucker the book 

Lastgaspism: Art and Survival in the Age of Pandemic

, a collection of interviews, critical essays, and artist portfolios that—in their words—“offers a framework to help us make sense of the interlocked crises of the unfolding present and asks with critical optimism what can happen in this time of transition.”

 contributions that will continue to unfold throughout the rest of the year.

At the quarter mark of the 21st century, more than two decades after the Patriot Act and now at the dawn of ubiquitous AI, privacy is nothing but a bad joke and our encrypted browsers won’t save us.

Which is not to say that the public sphere is healthy. In the United States, between Clintonian neoliberalism and Trump’s crony capitalism, everything “public” has been heavily degraded, disfigured, shut down, or shut out. Most public services are on life support. Public sector workers are the go-to punching bag for conservatives. Public education has one defender for every hundred critics. Public lands will be sold to real estate vultures for a song if the Republicans get their way. And public expression? Forget it. Circulation is so uneven and attention so fleeting that any given public gesture, message, or display might as well be private—in which case, refer to the bad joke above.

Over a three-part rolling release, this year’s edition of 

 seeks to make sense of the collapsed public/private scheme, once a workable distinction, now an ideological wreck. By addressing this condition directly and obliquely, the hope is that the conversations, essays, process notes, and other contributions amount to a genealogy of “private” and “public” while grappling with a world in which it is no longer possible to hide, and yet in which the spaces of mutual visibility and common communication continue to fracture and shrink.

The wish is to create forms of social engagement untethered to the outdated dichotomy, but that can realistically contend with inherited systems and distributions of power that were built on those presumptions of public versus private. If this edition of 

makes strides toward that end it will have been a success, all the more so as a project completed under a totalitarian regime on the ascent. It must be said, the events of 2025 and beyond—today, yesterday, any day you are reading this—temper our plans and expectations. Whatever adjustments we make as the year unfolds will stand as a record of this time. Progress is the hope, survival the goal.

This editorial platform was created in collaboration with curator and writer Risa Puleo, who served as an advisor and thought partner to A Blade of Grass in 2024. 

 is guest edited by Dan S. Wang with support from ABoG Program Directors Allie Linn and Lee Heinemann with Executive Director Lu Zhang. ABoG’s board is ashley sparks, Elissa Blount Moorhead, Diya Vij, Gregory Sale, Michael Premo, and Michael Quattrone. Rebekah Kirkman copyedited these contributions and Team designed the identity and interface for 

Dan S. Wang

Over a three-part rolling release, this edition of 

 seeks to make sense of the collapsed public/private scheme, once a workable distinction, now an ideological wreck. 

No Privacy, No Public 

Ideally, live your life such that you can choose the people who will care for you and choose the place they do this in. Preferably, have a home. Preferably, have children.

Or: Live the life of a hearty shut-in! A stalwart pariah! Some other salt-of-the-earth spinster type!

Avoid fame or even broad name recognition, including accidental viral internet attention through a well-intentioned, tech-savvy grandnephew. The town square owns your life once you are done with it along with a license for unearned familiarity, but some can’t wait so some retreat is necessary.

Lie. Outright and by omission, as needed. You will find the ethical distinction here as thin and useful as it ever was. Lie to friends and family, to co-workers, your barber. About your body, your diagnoses, how your day is going, your plans for the new year. Tell yourself whatever you need to about the cost of privacy, the calculus of protection.

Tell yourself whatever in general. You cannot fuck up the dying part, not even lost in a labyrinth of denial and deception, or by revoking your DNR in a final attempt to sabotage your heirs.

Rest assured, the body knows how to die. It’s other people, to our credit, who do not always know to leave well enough alone. Manage their expectations as best you can. Then, give up.

This one is much harder. You probably can’t but if you can, choose it carefully.

First, accept that you will die an unnatural or unexpected death. The cause, if not famine, will arrive suddenly, even if you should, as with famine, drag out the dying.

Prepare yourself that it will almost certainly be violent, shocking to you or those who witness it or both.

You will need witnesses. These should include strangers. If this is not possible, die somewhere that strangers might have been and might still be the ones to find you.

A death in public must leave a wake of compounding questions that will confound the conscience of the living forever.

Die on camera, or on the phone with ambulance drivers, or later on a screen in Venice to a twenty three minute long standing ovation. (Do not expect the filmmakers to join a cultural boycott against your killers.)

Have enemies, whether you wish this or not. Preferably, live your life in such a way that you choose the people who want you dead, and the reason. 

 the reason. And be okay with this reason, if not those people.

Or: Alight yourself with fire. Die of AIDS and forget burial. Dump your body on the steps of the FDA, the White House, the door of the church that didn’t hear you ringing for the shelter.

Rest assured that even if you die a political death in private, you can still have a public and visibly political funeral. For this it is best to have a will, and maybe leave the details vague. Perhaps just “do something formal and aesthetic” after Tim Bailey

 , leaving grace room for your loved ones to balk at the order to defile your dearly beloved body. If you can, give a thought to your outfit. Perhaps a gallows day triumph like Mary Queen of Scots’, going red to her God in the blood of his martyrs.

Very few would choose a public death, fearing it would not be dignified. Very few will compromise this dignity for any other goal. In the face of such ignominity, you might seek comfort in Islam, which rewards with paradise a 

) who is killed by the same evil to which they bore a final, holy witness.

Accept the fact that unless you are yourself the cause, you will have no say in the cause whatsoever. Indeed, your abject vulnerability to circumstance will almost certainly be rooted inextricably with the public thing that kills you.

An English gallows, yes. Also the highway, a river. Your office? Your prison cell? Notice with indoor places it gets harder to say. Notice how exposure to the elements becomes a factor in your death corresponding to your exposure to such elements in life.

Is there a difference between a curtain drawn around a bed and a door that can close but which you cannot reach? Consider a cancer ward high above the fray and consider the emergency room, street level. Consider the emergency room for a patient with a doctor and a bed of their own somewhere, versus one whose unhoused life is the emergency.

Do we call it a public death for an unhoused man whose living and dying are better known to the staff of the emergency room than any of his unreachable next of kin? Are strangers always

? Are nurses ever strangers? What if they nurses publish a paper

 using his death as an exemplary case study of how Foucault, Agamben, and Mbembe’s

 theories of biopolitical forces reduce him to a state of “bare life” as he is pushed through the cracks in an extractive, for-profit health care industry that provides him no meaningful care until, unconscious and unlikely to resuscitate, they hook him up to the most technologically advanced life-preserving interventions on earth, only to feel so morally conflicted and medically pessimistic that days later they outsource the decision of his death to a vote? Does the intervention of these nurses, doctors, and members of an ethics board make his death somehow more public in the dubious privacy of a hospital room, than if he had expired beneath the undeniably public overpass where he lived?

Be prepared: These are the sort of questions a public death must burst open like a spiral uncoiled from a spring.

And finally: Forgive me. You cannot really die

in public. Your real dying, true dying—the unharnessing of your consciousness and flesh—is sited in the void to which none of the living can be privy. And forgive me again: This cloud of solitude is not quite privacy, either.

I am sorry. I cannot be sorry. We all die
alone and held
in the palm of a mystery, veiled from each other
and from ourselves.