These are times marked and marred by Homeland Security measures, terrorist attacks, preemptive “just” wars, and non-denial denials regarding the legality of torture and unrecorded detentions. The most pressing question is perhaps not “Are you paranoid?” but rather, “Are you paranoid enough?” Concerned TDR readers may be interested in the case of Critical Art Ensemble cofounder Steve Kurtz, who gained national—and federal—attention earlier this past summer [2004]. To get our own bearings on the situation, we visited Mass MOCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) to view Free Range Grain, an aborted exhibition by CAE and Beatriz da Costa. The performative exhibit was to have been part of Mass MOCA’s show, The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere, which also included such artists as William Pope.L, subRosa, and The Yes Men. The show asked, in part: “How can artists and the public become engaged in complex sciences like biotechnology, sociology, and anthropology? Why would they want to? We think of science as a world unto itself, the realm of super-specialists, but is it a public sphere, too?” Mass MOCA’s questions seemed entirely appropriate, and yet...one of the exhibitions was aborted. Why? The reason appears to have everything to do with policing the boundaries of the public sphere. An aborted exhibition is an exhibition of what might have been, had there been an exhibition—that is, in this case, had CAE not been under criminal investigation. In the center of the abandoned exhibit was a sign: