Statements like those from Hirst and Stockhausen illustrate Western society's attempt to grasp the possibility of political complicity in this atrocity, piling shock value atop "shock and awe." Simultaneously, they comment on an image's ability to force a rubberneck and subsequent pileup, complete with road rage. As always, the medium is the message, and the overt, whether in image, action or statement, can be dangerously powerful. That morning was real but in some sense there continues to be no feeling of reality. This divorce from the "real" political world, this inaccessibility seemingly built right into it, are intrinsic to the culture's response, just as artists are for the most part intrinsic to the culture. As such, artists are often faced with choosing whether their work and life will deal directly or indirectly, or not at all, with their government. (This is, of course, not always an option left to the artist - think Soviet poster-making, World War I and II propaganda, or NEA censorship.)

A strangely corporeal distance, whether forced upon us by the times or elected protectively, cannot help but seep into art-making; whether the art reacts against it or embraces it remains largely a choice for the individual. Of course, this is no different locally. Gallery work is not meant for consumption by the wider society, and public art is government-sanctioned. Political work, in the traditional sense, is elusive in Baltimore. When the overt is limited to Bush/Kerry stickers on telephone poles, or the first tag on a hotly debated and recently unveiled I-83 overpass, questions arise over what constitutes political work, and whether visual art is any longer a viable reactionary venue when it can't compete with the "reality" of the political state here or elsewhere.

The politics of art-making in a city this socio-economically divided is an issue all its own. One of the most beautiful public art projects in recent memory has been off-matched slops of color applied by city cleanup crews to cover graffiti on well-traveled routes. Rather than masking a stain, the act and resulting paint only play into the very dialogue street art aims to elicit. More and more, however, it seems artists here opt for oblique political references, or none at all. Whether this is in line with a conscious decision toward formal work, or with lack of empowerment (or drive) to address a convoluted political system, is up for debate. Further, there is always the fear of pigeonholing oneself, especially when Baltimore is often a juncture for artists, not necessarily a destination. Much like neo-con, libertarian, and Republicrat, the label "political artist" can be simultaneously descriptive and limiting. In art, there are only so many options for unconcealed politics along right or left lines before, as with "God Bless The USA" stickers versus "No War For Oil," the audience rolls its eyes and, fed up, turns it back.

An audience is not always looking for the obvious; in fact, explicitness can be insulting. Nuance, shrouded and fragmented meaning, subtlety and the subliminal: in art and culture, these qualities are interesting and invite probing. There are many Baltimore artists investigating the duality of comment and aesthetic. Literary forms provide a framework within which all kinds of structural challenges can occur, and so performative and slam poets attempt resolution in coffeeshops and warehouse spaces across the city. In some respects, the written word possesses more congenital posterity than visual work, simply because of its ability to show and tell, to be less-readily identified with, and perhaps limited by, a particular place and time.

A phenomenon in this vein of delicate shrewdness, which is not exclusive to but prevalent in Baltimore, is the narrowing gap between a vital underground and its more accessible counterpart. At least within the institutionalized art scene - "institution" meaning the strange mainstream, from MICA to Station North - there lies the adoption and re-appropriation of "street-art," which of course exists in its genuine form east and west of the Charles Street corridor. Such pre-empted graphics are wheat-pasted onto the sides of abandoned buildings. Guerilla aesthetics and borrowed urbania pervade screen-printed clothing produced by Shine Collective, Tricky Apparel and Baltimore's bored? Studios. Ultimately, it all becomes hipster cool - a badge of a left-leaning sub-culture which shies away from demonstrative politics on the whole. Fashion aside, that is.

In the end our media dictates where and how politics take place - sometimes literally - and therefore it controls the methods by which they are digested. Sites like www.rhizome.org (The New Museum's online art platform), www.subvertise.org, and www.adbusters.org and their magazine don't need to root in one city; they just need to reach the big ones. Listserves like www.moveon.org are ubiquitous beyond the scope of most two-dimensional work. Accessibility and expansion are already built into Baltimore-based Tim Krieder's comic strip, The Pain, When Will it End? by nature of its print medium, the City Paper. High art is not a cog in the propaganda machine (aside from its role as a commodity), nor does an art piece removed from some explanation appear to incite much change. Controversial academic Susan Sontag had much to say, sometimes more eloquently than Hirst and Stockhausen, about powerful images such as those crumbling twin towers - without context, we might as well be watching the season's horror action flick. In Baltimore, we are lucky to have certain institutions on which to rely for reminders of and information about the "reality" of reality. Red Emma's, Normal's Books, and Atomic Books for alternative reading and events; School 33 and The Creative Alliance for nontraditional arts programming, Chris Gilbert's investigative curatorial efforts at the BMA, the innate subversion of the American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore Indymedia, the writings of "iconoclast" William Hughes and his contemporaries, reactionary expression through The Shattered Wig and similar dadaist musings, and an active 'zine culture. While they vary in scale and prominence, none of these are insignificant.

The question in Baltimore becomes this: Does visual quiet signify apathy, safety, or preparatory contemplation? How much of that is owed to the simple fact that Baltimore will always have New York to look up to? Leaving aside political issues, compare the two cities' responses to public art projects disdained by most of the arts community. In New York, artist's reactions to The Gates are popping up everywhere, outside and online. Yet despite being widely vilified, Borofsky's radiating androgyny in front of Penn Station goes on blinking with little visual argument. There was recently a call for entries similar to the Fish Out of Water project; this time, giant crabs await transformation at the hands of local artists. To construct one that would change its $1000 stipend into birth control, bus tokens, paint pens or Voter Registration Cards might be refreshing.