As of January, 2009 my exhibition “Popping the Bubble: 2008 Unemployment Statistics” at the Springer Cultural Center in Champaign, IL has been cancelled. The piece, a massive installation (approximately 1000 square feet of space), would have covered the floor with multiple layers of bubble wrap. Each bubble was to have represented one job lost in 2008 (for a total of 2.6 million bubbles/jobs), in what economists and politicians glibly call a “popped bubble” of economic prosperity. As viewers walked through the installation, they would have popped these bubbles themselves, making a visceral connection between them and the millions of newly-unemployed.Although the Springer was excited about the piece, it was censored twice. The first time, it was censored by Tim Cronin, the safety inspector, who said that I could not place anything on the floor where people might walk. However, even after I compromised by removing the wrapping from a central walkway (leading to a locked set of glass emergency doors, no less), he was unwilling to allow the piece to appear. He was also unable to demonstrate how and why the bubble wrap was any more dangerous than any of the other materials on the floor at the Springer, including several rugs and, most significantly, other artwork from previous shows that were placed in walking areas. After the Springer’s Board of Directors overturned his decision for its sheer incoherence, he called the Champaign Fire Marshall to get the piece censored yet again. The Fire Marshall dutifully complied, and forced the Springer to halt the exhibition. He was unable to give any justification other than the materials needed to be rated as fireproof, again disregarding the flammable materials of all other art exhibitions in the building. A statement that the bubble wrap actually required a very high heat to result in a flame (in my own experiments, it took a blow torch) rather than to simply melt was ineffective.Hopefully I’ll be able to find another venue for this piece, although it will of course have to be updated with contemporary statistics. As the economy is going to be pretty bad for a while, I don’t see us losing the poignancy of the “popped bubble” any time soon. Public art or no, I can’t say I’m happy about that.