“Crush” is the colloquial term for the mass destruction of illicit goods seized by authorities. For the sixth issue of Public Domain, Canal Street Research Association assembles documents tracing the lineage of the crush: impressive heaps, brutal police actions, botched publicity stunts, corporate rituals of destruction, and the political spectacle of smashing goods, taking as their starting point an infamous—yet now largely forgotten—crush of bootleg Fendi bags confiscated on Canal Street.

With each issue of Public Domain, we invite a distinct voice to select a sequence of images culled from the public domain. The expansion of accessible grants, broadband internet and affordable scanning technology have made available massive caches of otherwise inaccessible material, formerly silently sitting in institutions around the world. With this publication we willfully reanimate these archives by putting their holdings back into circulation.

98 pages.
8.5 x 11 in.