In the front window of the Slought Foundation on the 4000 block of Walnut Street you can see a running video of a cross burning. Close-ups of the burning cross, the flames empowered by wind, broadcast a host of subliminal images: the midnight ride of the Klu Klux Klan, southern lynchings, the book, 'Three Lives for Mississippi,' bigotry, death and intimidation. If ever one needed a test of the everlasting power of symbols, this is it.

Cross burning, in general, evokes an emotional response. The two cross burning incidences that have occurred in Philadelphia recently were lead stories on the nightly news, a testament to the raw power of a cross on fire.

So why is the Slought gallery, which bills itself as engaging in "contemporary art and theory through alternative curatorial practices," hosting an exhibition entitled "An Intimate Burning," where twelve 18" high crosses will be lit and left to burn in West Philadelphia for about 8 to 10 minutes?

Before you jump on your moral horse and call the Action News tip line, consider that almost everything in the art world has deeper layers of meaning. As Slought Executive Director Aaron Levy likes to say, "We're experimenting. You could think of this as a laboratory." In this case, the laboratory's 'An Intimate Burning' will take place on December 3, 6-7 PM at a yet undisclosed location. The event is set to "demystify the idea of burning and the fear associated with it," and furthermore, "as a form of free speech its symbolic meaning is not exclusive to the KKK and can be appropriated in turn by others."

Others, and by that they mean African American artist/sculptor David Stevens, who has served on the board of the Fabric Workshop, the Brandywine Workshop and who has exhibited in such diverse places as the Philadelphia Airport.

Stevens says that the cross is "emblematic of the process of transformation" and cites its history as the Roman form of torture as well as the symbol "adopted by Christians as a symbol of redemption." The cross burning on December 3rd, however, is only a part of the total exhibition entitled "Kovert Konflagration Kovenant," which includes 12 wall panels in Braille by the artist and a group of representational crowns that according to the Slought exhibit literature, stage a conversation between Queen Candice (who brought Christianity to Ethiopia) and Ebed-melech (King Zedekiah's Ethiopian eunuch in the Bible) and Pennsylvania Klan members Berry and Byron Black. The "conversation", of course, never resolves itself, in part, because, as Stevens says, the participants "talk over one another."

Stevens, who is blind due to an early onset of glaucoma, often incorporates Braille into his work. This makes his pieces especially open to touch.

The exhibition recalls the 2002 Supreme Court ruling for Virginia vs. Black which took up the question of the constitutionality of cross burning on public or private property. In 1998, Pennsylvania Klan member Berry Black was arrested after burning a 25-foot tall cross at a Klan rally. Although the cross was burned on private property, it could be seen far and wide by area residents and travelers, including African Americans. The Supreme Court upheld a Virginia court ruling that said that Black's arrest amounted to "viewpoint discrimination" and violated the First Amendment.

In Philadelphia, all outdoor burning, except where there's an outdoor barbecue, is prohibited unless one applies for a permit from the Department of Licenses and Inspections.

Since the Slought gallery is located on property owned by the University of Pennsylvania, obtaining any kind of permit from the University to burn the crosses may be a losing proposition.

"I did attend one meeting with the University and at that one meeting the University assured us that we would be able to proceed as initially planned," Stevens says. "What we initially planned was to use its property across the street for the event." (An arts venue currently known as the Rotunda and which was formerly a Christian Science church.)

Stevens says that while the University always realized the controversial nature of the exhibit, as an artist he was dealing with the controversy of cross burning and not trying to create one. The University never spoke directly about the controversy but alluded to things other than content. "So the content is not the issue per se. It comes down to issues surrounding open burning."

That's the surface reading, at least.

As things stand now there's no place to burn the 12 sculpted crosses because of City regulations against open burning. Argentine-born artist Osvaldo Romberg, a Senior Curator at Slought (he curates the exhibit along with Senior Curator Jean-Michel Rabate and Director Aaron Levy) thinks that the University is afraid of what might happen "if you put crosses in the University area and run. People don't know what you're up to, so I think we should coordinate a way to do this," he says.

Romberg, who is a Professor at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and who has exhibited around the world, says he wants to think of a way to burn the crosses without violating the City ordinance. "I do not like the idea of making a conversation against the university because I do not think the University is doing that against David or against us. I think they are trying to protect themselves. They collaborate with us, they give us this gallery and they give us all the possibilities. So we should thank them for that," he affirms.

Levy, also an artist, says Slought was drawn to Stevens' project because of the politics of it and the issues it addresses. He believes that these things are being placed in the closet today. "We do see this project as having a local dimension, which is not just addressing larger abstract issues of race or cross burning by the Klan in America," he says, noting that he understands how inflammatory even the address of such a project can be.

"One thing that is difficult for the University to become comfortable with is that it involves an action that would take place in public and could potentially surprise people and provoke people with an event that they hadn't expected to see or encounter. That issue of provocation and unpredictability, I think, is where there's a certain sense of discomfort. How does one account for or even explain an action which even today seems to have one meaning, which is fear and intimidation?"

"Reading" the cross burning in a different way is what Slought hopes will happen on December 3.

"In our attempt to suggest that a cross burning could mean something else, nevertheless there is that moment which, I suppose, they are concerned about - that first encounter with an action that hasn't been labeled or brought to their attention. For us, as an organization, we are precisely interested in that moment of provocation, an ambiguous moment when you would come across the cross burning not necessarily knowing how to read it, and it's precisely that moment when there's hope that it could be read in a different way."

Senior Curator Rabate compares the stalemate with the University to the recent controversy in France banning Muslim headscarves in public schools.

Some in [liberal] France, Rabate says, ask how anyone can impose an edict having to do with symbols while another argumentÑand one he says he agrees withÑposits that if Muslim children go to school with very visible symbols then Catholics might come with big crosses or any kind of symbols. "This is why I understand the position of the University. There is something politically counter-intuitive in the University seeing the 3 curators here, 3 white men, burning crosses on the lawn."

But, Rabate says, "We do this first because we love David's art and we understand his ideas. David's art is beautiful, powerful and it makes people think."

Stevens reiterates that the Braille panels in the exhibit overlap one another in a way that suggests that they are "talking past one another" just like most do today when the subject is politics. "I mean," he says, "we hear all of this but we don't hear it. Then we either have the mindset to deal with either one side or the other. In terms of the present discourse, I tried to remove myself from it and not to take a position."

Both Stevens and Romberg have seen what happens when the state or the powers-that-be suppress artistic expression. Romberg recalls an exhibit of his in Argentina being closed by the police and his artwork carted away. Stevens, on the other hand, says he was working in the bureaucracy that funded the Mapplethorpe exhibition in Philadelphia many years ago. Though Mapplethorpe raised no eyebrows when it was viewed by thousands at the Institute of Contemporary Art exhibit in Philadelphia (also a University of Pennsylvania owned property), once the exhibition left the city for the Corcoran in Washington, D.C. all hell broke lose.

Stevens, who used to work at the Corcoran, blames the mess on a Corcoran volunteer who took the news of the exhibit to her husband who, in turn, went to Jesse Helms, whom Stevens says had probably never even set foot in the Corcoran, much less any art museum. Later, when the banned exhibit was moved to the WPA in Washington, it attracted up to 4,000 visitors a day. Once the exhibit became national news, Stevens says that "the yahoos in Philadelphia City Council spoke up and a Pennsylvania state representative, who also probably had never set foot in an art gallery, called me on the carpet for voting to fund it."

While it's possible that the cross burning on December 3 will proceed without any protests, Levy is mindful of the self-censoring effect that any art controversy has on the sponsoring gallery or museum.