Jans Haaning's Turkish and Arabic Jokes projects reveal the particular challenge of public work. There are always multiple publics that encounter a project. So it is critical how an artist chooses to privilege certain cultural biases and expectations over others.

In the Turkish area of central Oslo a tape-recording of jokes, told by Turks in their native language, was played. The recording was broadcasted through a loudspeaker attached to a light pole. Haaning continued his work on arabic or turkish jokes with a project in 2002 for planet22 in geneva, Switzerland. It consisted of posting an arabic joke in the streets of Geneva; it did not reveal its origin, and there was no signature, simply some information in arabic characters that is incomprehensible to most people in Geneva. And yet, for the immigrant public, this work brought humor and familiarity to an otherwise foreign, perhaps even antagonistic, urban experience.