The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
ON THE FLOOR
Charles Horton Cooley
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“You learned who you are by watching what other people reflected back at you. The mirror, it turns out, was people all along.”
ON THE FLOOR
Edward Soja
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“Space is not the stage the story happens on - it is one of the actors. Ask WHERE, and half the mystery answers itself.”
ON THE FLOOR
George Herbert Mead
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“The self is a conversation: the I speaking, the Me listening with everyone else's ears. You rehearse society every time you think.”
The Board of Health Placard
A printed card, about the size of a sheet of letter paper, pasted to a front door: the name of a disease in heavy type, and below it the words 'by order of the Board of Health'. Nobody in the house put it there.
The Zoning Resolution Broadside
A large printed sheet folded to fit a coat pocket: three maps of the same city in coloured districts, and columns of small type that say what may be built where. Dated July 25, 1916.
The Police Captain's Log
A thick ledger bound in cloth, its corners soft with use, lying open on a station-house desk. Each line is a night: the hour, a name, a street, and what was done about it.
The Tweed Certificate
A printed county warrant on heavy paper, an engraved border, a sum written in ink and a signature at the foot. It authorises payment from the public treasury for work on the new county courthouse.
The Tammany Receipt
A small printed slip, half the size of a postcard, acknowledging a 'voluntary contribution' from a city employee to the organisation. The amount is a fixed share of his salary.
The Municipal Prospectus
A slim printed pamphlet offering the city's bonds for sale: the sum sought, the interest promised, the works to be built, and a page of figures on the city's population, taxes and debt.
The Alley Photograph
A narrow yard between two tenement walls, boys lined against the brick, washing overhead. The caption a reformer gave the picture - 'candidates for crime' - is printed as if it were a fact.
The Burned Court House
A shell of stone with the roof gone and the windows empty, photographed within days of the fire. This was the seat of the city's government.
The Mask Order in the Street
A street-car conductor in a gauze mask turning a passenger away; the passenger has none. Seattle, autumn 1918, the same weeks San Francisco wrote its mask ordinance.
The No-Trespassing Sign
A fence, a printed sign, and behind it tents and vehicles under a freeway. The sign is the city's; the tents are not.
The Ring Arithmetic
A blackboard, a sum that does not add up, and the men of the Tweed Ring teaching it. A cartoon that argued with numbers.
Tammany Hall, 14th Street
A four-storey building with a wide entrance and a name across the front, on a street of shops and street-cars. From here the city's jobs were given out.
The Tweed Courthouse
A marble courthouse behind City Hall, columned and domed, still in use. It is the building the Tweed certificates paid for - many times over.
The Naturalization Scene
A crowded room, a judge at a table, men in line with papers in their hands. Citizens are being made, by the dozen, on the eve of an election.
PS5-046 · The Police Power — Open the drawer
The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
PS5-047 · The Police Power — What is this thing?
The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
PS5-048 · The Police Power — Read the source
The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
PS5-049 · The Police Power — Map it / time it
The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
PS5-050 · The Police Power — Two sources disagree
The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
PS5-051 · The Police Power — State the claim
The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
PS5-052 · The Police Power — Take the other side
The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
PS5-053 · The Police Power — Weigh it
The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
PS5-054 · The Police Power — Build the answer
The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
PS5-055 · The Police Power — For the file
The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
PS5-056 · The Police Power — Go and look
The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
PS5-057 · The Police Power — Now, today
The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
PS5-058 · The Police Power — Teach it back
The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
PS5-059 · The Police Power — The other place
The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
PS5-060 · The Police Power — One object, close
The broadest power a city holds is the vaguest one: health, safety, morals, welfare.
From the gallery’s own wall — “PS5-046 · The Police Power — Open the drawer”.