John Miller. Reconstructing a Public Sphere

John Miller's PowerPoint presentation, Reconstructing a Public Sphere, focuses on a specific location, Battery Park City and the adjacent World Trade Center in New York. It is both a photographic essay and critical text-and despite its title, Miller's most autobiographical work to date. Microsoft's PowerPoint, the heir apparent to the 35-mm slide projector, sadly now "the staple of comedy skits," is subverted by Miller's narrative of personal memory and experience: he ponders the park's civic history and public art projects, as well as his evacuation from the area in the wake of 9/11. Upon returning to the park fifteen years later, Miller questions how public space develops from reconstruction-and the function of the public within it. Akin to the effects of photography, he considers how public space redacts local history as much as it conjures subjective memory.