AMY BALKIN ::::

Taken from the exterior signage of organizations in the Bay Area involved in activities including military-industrial development and production, surveillance, remote sensing, or war profiteering, Balkin’s rubbings act as reminders of the consumer’s participation in supporting the American-led occupation of Iraq. As many of these organizations are located in nondescript business parks, Balkin was able to make rubbings at some sites, but not at others, which had no signs or were inaccessible to the general public. The result of this effort is factlike renderings of corporate logos representing self-organized and voluntary groups of people who produce war. Power, which appears to be unembodied, is found to be located in these organizations’ sites, but distributed by the people that willingly participate through their work. Balkin did not meet with anyone from any of these organizations during her trips. The operation of these entities speaks to the banality of evil, evidenced in everyday and unspectacular participation in the distributed production of permanent war. This activity was inspired by former AT&T technician Mark Klein and his whistle-blowing on the collusion between AT&T and the NSA in warrantless domestic Internet surveillance via the slurping of raw data in a room at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco. The rubbings were made in April and May 2008.

Balkin was the recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 2007 and the Creative Work Fund Grant for Invisible 5 in 2004. She has exhibited and presented as an artist and panelist both locally and internationally, as an individual artist and with collectives. She exists online at Public Smog (www.publicsmog.org) and This Is the Public Domain (www.thisisthepublicdoman.org), and in collaboration on Invisible 5 (www.invisible5.org).