THE BEGINNING
The story doesn't really have a beginning, but it centers around the urge to collect. I suppose collections can have value, turn a profit, or provide a focus for ones gathering impulses. Generally my collecting is more about a process of amassing junk and then, under duress, sorting through and getting rid of it. Years back, when a friend found a piece of trash, so loaded with significance, as well as trashiness, I had to begin a serious collection. A piece of a porn magazine had been torn out, written on, folded up, possibly treasured and then lost.

During that year I decided to collect lost porn; some 30 or so pieces came into my hands, either found by me or donated by others who knew about the project. The culmination came when a friend found a double ended dildo lying in the gutter at the corner of 13th and Locust streets. She bravely scuttled the item into a handily available trash bag (before the days of the privately funded trash cleanup crews.) Like most people, she was revolted by the dildo, horrified when I took it out to have a look, but gave very little thought to what dangers might be conveyed on the bag which was so conveniently lying in the street near the collected object.

Not long after the dildo find, I decided to begin my used condom collection. I felt that I had hit upon an item so awful, so unworthy of collection, that I would finally be alone in my pursuit. Not so. Once again, the news traveled, and condoms were being collected from streets and parking lots, parks, golf courses and trails in the woods. The stipulation being, that they must be found in public spaces and to have been used by persons unknown to the collector, strangers.

MOTIVATION
As the collection was taking shape, I began to think about a way to display or re-present the work to the public. I envisioned the location of the exhibit to be quite near the area which had spawned the collection. I wanted it to be available to the public view just as the original finds had been, but formalized, so as to create the impression of value. My first attempt, a rather routine procedure of putting my name on a waiting list for a street window space hosted by my alma matter, was challenged by an extra procedural interview and request for a written proposal, which was then perfunctorily turned down. (with the advice that I take this to New York; they do that kind of stuff there.)

I began work on a videotape based on my collection experiences, called Broad Street. As an small item of vengeance, though not straying from the actual demographics of the original condom project, I chose the strip of Broad Street on which the above mentioned university is located as the backdrop for my animation.

I was now excited by the idea of showing this work, but I realized that my simple and cost effective option for exhibition was closed. I sought funds from the now defunct New Forms Regional Grant Program (jointly funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the local state arts council and a few private foundations.) I did not receive an award. Funding did come through a regional regrant media program for the production of the videotape, Broad Street. I worked (for a living) worked on animating that tape, and the condom collection in my closet grew. The following year I reapplied to the New Forms Grant Program. I could now claim one grant under my belt, as well as an ever widening circle of condom collectors (collaborators, in grant speak.) A new year, a new panel, I was awarded a grant, and was thrilled indeed. Along with the other awardees from that cycle, I awaited the rubber stamp of NEA approval and the transfer of the funds. Unlike the other awardees, my proposal never got that stamp.

THE DESCENT
The NEA sent the director of the regrant agency a fax, followed by a detailed letter clarifying their objections to my project, and outlining a course of remedy. Simple enough, I thought. In the first paragraph, it was stated: "Before a decision can be made regarding this grant recommendation, the Endowment's statute requires further assurances regarding the safety of this project."

In paragraph three I found that: "The Endowment's authorizing stature requires that projects funded by the Endowment must be performed under safe and sanitary working conditions." (One must pause here to wonder how other artists and their studio environments would stand up under such scrutiny.) "The statute authorizes the Secretary of Labor to enact regulations enforcing this provision; the secretary has issued a regulation stating that OSHA standards apply."

The fourth paragraph describes what was required of me: "the Endowment must have further information about the "precautions"[quotation marks sic] being observed by the project collaborators. The General Counsel is requesting that the artist [me] provide a statement from the Pennsylvania Department of Public Health or other appropriate public health authority that the project complies with OSHA standards and will not involve unsafe, unsanitary or hazardous conditions for any individual involved in the collection, installation or display of the condoms."

MY WORK BEGINS
I read statute 20 § 954, and there is mention of health and safety standards, along with an assurance of receiving not less than the prevailing minimum compensation for persons employed in similar activities. 15 pages of the OSHA standard taught me that one should use gloves while handling potential contagions, and subsequently store them in well marked receptacles, before appropriately disposing of them. I understood that I was entrapped in the latest wave of NEA fear of controversy. They had become savvy enough to eschew outright censorship, favoring instead a bureaucratic non solution. I didn't think the task they set before me was easy, I'd fought censorship before (and lost every battle) but I did think that with perserverence and attention to detail, I could thread my way through their mass of stipulations and provide them with enough paper to make them either hand over the money or issue a flat denial. The denial had advantages over the bureaucratic tie up, in that it could easily be categorized as censorship based on content. National watchdog organizations could then pursue the matter. The bureaucratic, "Does it follow OSHA standard?" elides censorship. On the surface, it makes just enough sense to cause these organizations to be wary of the "purity" of the case. Despite the glamour of censorship and national attention, I simply wanted money for the completion of the project.

I undertook a two-pronged approach. I devised an instructional form to be signed by the condom collectors, which excerpted salient portions of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration document the NEA had provided me. I then attempted to procure a statement from an "appropriate public health authority."

I contacted the local university's Department of Environmental Safety. I explained to the person I was transferred to, that I was involved in an art project which entailed the collection of used condoms from the street. I needed advice on how to do this safely. Furthermore, I wanted to know if they could suggest guidelines for the exhibition of these specimens. The individual I spoke with, who later asked for her comments to be removed from my Methodology Statement, was at first unwilling to spend any time discussing a project that would not take place on university property, but after some coaxing, said that universal precautions (gloves) should be used during collection, that the installation should be viewed from behind glass and a wall should separate the installation from those on the inside of the building.

Changing course, I headed now in the direction of the NEA cited authority; I placed a call to the local OSHA office. Again I tried to explain my project and seek clarification on my predicament, but this civil servant listened to me long enough to find out that there was no company that was suspected of being in violation of OSHA standards and she quickly terminated the conversation.

Unfortunately I was now left to deal with municipal health officials, certainly overworked, and worse yet, holding highly public and politicized offices; I had wanted to avoid this terrain. I sought advice from friends in the AIDS movement as to who would be a liberal leaning, pro-arts, approachable administrator. Following their recommendations, I again placed calls, tracked down busy people, explained about the used condoms and the hoped for window display. I had some interesting chats, but no statements were forthcoming. None of these savvy mid level bureaucrats would sign on to such a scheme, and I was shifted ever upwards through the layers of command, until I arrived, helplessly, at the top.

A well spoken, extremely paternalistic southern gentleman heard me out, and then declared, there was no reason to take any risk at all. I should not do the project, it did not have enough value to warrant even minimal risk. I could, however, employ [unused] facsimiles of used condoms. In an attempt to claim my dignity, I pointed out that I did not require his artistic judgment as to the worth of the project, this service had already been performed by a panel of art professionals. I did need a public health official to make an evaluation of how closely my precautionary methods matched OSHA standards for the activity I was involved in. I got nowhere.

Redoubling my efforts, I decided that if I was to be considered an employer and held to federal safety standards, then the regional office of OSHA did indeed have the responsibility to review my collection and storage protocol. Creating a paper trail, or at the very least a file, might be the only recourse of the bureaucratically disadvantaged. Thus I sent my Methodology Statement off to a person with the title: Industrial Hygienist. I did get a reply which included the observation:

The OSHA administrator also notes that I will be responsible to provide a Hepatitis B vaccine, offer medical surveillance "to persons who incur an exposure incident as defined in the standard" and that I must address issues of training and labeling of containers. Whether this letter constituted an approval of my procedures, I will leave to the discretion of the reader.

The collectors were duly instructed in universal precautions, advised of their right to procure a hepatitis B vaccine (at my expense) . I felt confident that storage could be managed in some sort of leak proof, labeled container. The focus of my quest was narrowing: what remained was the question of display. The OSHA standard covered disposal of potentially contagious material, but there was nothing written on the holding indefinitely and displaying of samples to the public. Hepatitis B was the sticking point. Privately the time frame of six months was thought to be the limit of the virus' viability, publicly, no one was prepared to state a bench life.

I could see now that the NEA, whether they had consciously thought this out or not, had assigned me a task that could not be accomplished. If no standard is written for the operation one needs to perform, then de facto, one remains in non-compliance. The phone bills were mounting, two months had passed since I had first heard of my grant award and the fact that I wasn't getting the money. I truly hoped that some scientist would write me a personal standard for the display of my collections.

ON THE TRAIL
I approached the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. I was referred to a medical epidemiologist in the Hospital Infections Program. To my surprise, she was quite personable, inquisitive, and seemed to have far more time than local officials to contemplate a course of action appropriate to my situation. We briefly discussed the progress I had made thus far, she concurred that I seemed to be in compliance in terms of universal precautions. She sent me pamphlets from the CDC including a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. And she referred me to the primary author of the OSHA Bloodborne Pathogens Standard at the US Department of Labor.

Dr. OSHA Standard was very quick on the uptake, and began to ruminate on the possible methods of sterilization that would not compromise the integrity or further degrade the quality of my specimens. (It is worth noting here that latex is biodegradable, many of the specimens were found in varying states of decomposure; it was important to avoid further degradation of the items.) However, the appeal of this course of action was that if the contagion factor was removed from the used condom collections, before I displayed them, then I could easily prove I was in compliance with OSHA standards.

To this end, I was referred to the person who was responsible for condom testing at the Food and Drug Administration. Eager to find a solution, he quickly ruled out standard methods of sterilization such as immersion in a bleach solution or autoclaving on account of their deleterious effects on latex. For some time he considered the possibility of procuring me a contact in a local hospital so that I could expose my specimens to Ethylene Oxide gas. This method, in addition to involving rather intricate arrangements with the medical industry, was also of questionable efficacy, because it had yet to be determined whether the gas would effectively penetrate the biomass of my specimens. We settled on a procedure that involved a six month holding period, the adherence to "Universal Precautions" during installation, and the use of a surface disinfectant in the area of display.

It was fun, exciting, and rather amusing to be talking with some of this country's top scientists on a personal basis. But is was also tedious and frustrating. A linear account can not adequately record the simultaneous layers of my activity nor the attendant and conflicting emotional responses to each small break through and set back. My priorities shifted each day as the problem showed it's different faces. On the most basic level was the desire to receive the grant awarded; mounting the installation and possibly renting a space for it was not going to possible without this money. But this alone was not a driving force, it wouldn't have been possible for me to pursue the matter this far on the strength of my conviction in my own work alone.

The NEA was engaged in an overall process of self censorship, only part of which was to undercut the autonomy and strength of the regional arts programs. The regrant system allowed for decentralized regional grant allocation. The amount of the grant awards were not large, generally under $5000, but the panels were not tied to Washington politics, they changed each year, and although there is no perfect system when aesthetic judgments come in to play and exclusions must be made, it was widely felt that regional panels took risks and had genuine interest in interesting work.

I fell back on my belief that art making is not a private activity, but one embedded in social meaning and interaction. My desire to take on the subject of public space (emblemized by the emotion laden objects I hauled in from the outside) required that I engage with the various institutions that have a regulatory role on public life. While I resented that I did not have the energy or time to make art and enjoy a sense of creativity, I recognized that the rhetoric: art confronts social norms, has to be substantiated. I had to do this work, talk with every official on their own terms, try to shift their disinterest and distaste to a place where they could see that this project wasn't the oft cited waste of tax payer money, but a chance to discuss public perceptions and fears about outdoor space, contagions and disease.

Meanwhile, my frustration was still mounting as no authorizing paperwork was actually in hand. I began to call all the arts activists I knew, I put pressure on the regrant institution, who had been oddly unconcerned with the matter; I tried to get their board members appraised of this situation. I went to the local volunteer lawyers for the arts, was assigned a lawyer who had very little knowledge of censorship issues, grants or the NEA, but did record the facts of the case and was very reassuring about the probability that I would get my money. I called some of the national organizations that are concerned with art censorship. More long distance phone calls. They all wanted written materials sent. The ACLU's Arts Censorship Project did respond: "The NEA's requirements may well be a pretext for discomfort with the content of your work, but I suspect this would be difficult if not impossible to prove. Therefore I can't offer much in the way of legal assistance or advice, either with respect to obtaining the required public health assurances, or to persuading the NEA that they are not necessary." They did send me the latest issue of their publication: "Arts Censorship Project Newsletter."

CONCLUSION
At some point, several months into this effort, I got a call from the administrator at the regrant institution, no paperwork was ever issued. The NEA had withdrawn its involvement with the grant, but the state arts council had decided to supply me with the full amount of the grant award. I was instructed not to reference the NEA in the acknowledgement statement that customarily must be displayed on all granted projects.

I got the money, I did the project. In the year that followed, the NEA completely withdrew funding to all regional regrant programs.