Imagine a room lined with file cabinets, each 8 drawers high. No windows, just enough space for one doorway. Overhead are two small light bulbs. In the center is a desk with a computer monitor and keyboard. Here and there cabinet drawers have been replaced with glowing, flickering monitors, and in a partially opened drawer below each is a mouse - computer type, not four legged - for you to enter the electronic file room. At your fingertips are records of many celebrated cases of censorship. The "files" are indexed by medium, geography, time, or motivation (political, religious, sexual, etc.). Take your pick of index, tickle your mouse, wait a second or two, and read on.

How disappointing it is that the indexes for The File Room are crude at best. Using geography, you can sort down to nothing less than country. Using time you can sort to a hunk of years. Somewhat understandable the farther from the present you are looking, but for this century the time index was next to useless. I told myself: this is Art, not a reference library.

Disappointments aside, I opened several drawers. I wanted to find two celebrated cases during the 1980's involving the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) and its vaunted School (SAIC). Perhaps you remember: the student painting of Harold Washington, snatched away by outraged aldermen while the AIC mavens stood by doing nothing; or, same place, a few years later, an American flag placed on the exhibit floor, this is until the AIC mavens led the brigade of outraged censors. The titles of the files, however, were just that, titles. Clever, but almost useless, especially if you consider the crude indexing system.

Before I could find those two articles I read through files involving a conductor of the Boston Symphony who refused to play The Star Spangled Banner before each concert; George Carlin's on profanity as broadcast by Pacifica Radio; and a bunch of other stuff. Each article read as if several attorneys had approved each word before it appeared on the screen. I always imagined the creative process to involve passion. We got "just the facts, ma'am," but that may be the price of exhibiting in a public place. God forbid there be any passion in the endeavor, lest someone give it a political interpretation and... Finally, I became creative and tried something labeled "Mirth and Girth," or akin to that. I decided I had nothing to lose on "Mirth and Girth." The once offending portrait of Harold Washington soon appeared along with a terse but passionless article. Oh well, AIC and SAIC were among the supporting network of institutions for The File Room. (Can they yet be worthy of membership or charitable contributions? Network support aside, are AIC and SAIC even now truly committed to artistic expression or its institutional hide?)

Aldermen may be tamer these days; after all, they no longer have to prove they are not racist to counter nightly television pictures of their vituperations. AIC has snuggled quietly back on the east side of Michigan Avenue. Let the story by cautiously told, let it be almost artfully told. Place it in the true jewel of Michigan Avenue, the Cultural Center (nee Public Library). Run aerobics-type music nearby. Who will ever take it seriously? (I discovered on exit that a coffee shop was just outside The File Room, adding much background noise not normally associated with file environs. I never could figure out where the sweatin' music came from.)

Let it be noted that The File Room is the product of Muntadas, Randolph Street Gallery, the School of Art and Design of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. Also, if you home-surf through the Internet via your computer and its modem, you could have gotten the same thing. Would it have been the same? Or do you have to be there, aerobics music in the background, city noises proliferating, the tinkling of glasses and aroma of fresh coffee in a murky file room itself? Can art be brought home via a telephone line? Stored on a floppy disk? Can a postcard, say, of the Picasso in Daley Plaza convey the power of that piece the way being there with the continuing public response invariably does?

Kerm Krueger

The File Room can be accessed on the Web at http://fileroom.aaup.uic.edu/FILEROOM.html