HARM TO ONGOING MATTER

Harm to Ongoing Matter takes its title and source material from the publicly released Mueller Report, an account of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and its connections to the Trump campaign. Twelve pages are selected from the full 448-page report for the distinct visual compositions produced by their redactions. All remaining language is removed, along with the government’s repeated designation “Harm to Ongoing Matter,” which is retained only on the cover. Leaving only the black fields that once concealed information, what was withheld becomes what remains.

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The work isolates the visual language of redaction. Stripped of their administrative function, the black fields become compositions in their own right: rhythm, scale, density, interruption, and negative space emerge from acts of withholding. The logic of the document is reversed. What once concealed information becomes the only information available, each page emptied of legible meaning yet heavy with implication.

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Reformatted as a newspaper and sealed in plastic as a limited-edition object, Harm to Ongoing Matter moves between government document, public information, image, and commodity. The work subjects its source to its own acts of selection and removal, implicating itself in the structures it examines.