Artisms

Of the many things that set us apart from the animal kingdom words and writing are exclusively human. It is a form of communication that was invented through necessity, and every word that is invented has a specific use. Words only exist to explain the object it is meant to explain. At times words are extremely accurate conveying thoughts and feelings perfectly, and at times they only suggest the truth. Jenny Holzer is very effective in her use of words and I think she paints as skillfully with words as any artist or writer.

                In Holzer’s Protect Project she uses powerful combinations of words with such conviction and visual stimulation after I left the Whitney Museum to return home my mind continued contemplating the words on display. The lighting effects, the movement and overlay of words, and the words themselves produced an experience like none other. Holzer had three key elements in all of her light pieces: light, movement, and content. Each piece had a different ability in its total effectiveness of communication. Holzer’s reproduced declassified Redaction Paintings revealed to me in truth how free information in America is not, and how much knowledge the government still has the option to withhold from us. Lustmord only aided the redaction pieces in communicating the atrocities of war.

At times I felt lost in the work: her combination of light effects and movement with the tangibility of the words themselves left me hypnotized.  The first piece, “For Chicago,” with the amber letters and the huge LED signs was visually extremely off-putting at first. There were two sets of writings overlaid with one moving faster than the other. Initially due to the same color and alternating speeds it was hard to follow exactly what was occurring, however I realized this combination of movement forced my eye to concentrate exactly on the words I wanted to. This forced an acute attention to detail and the words she was communicating. This effect forced me to follow exactly what she was saying and due to its mesmerizing quality I spent a very long time standing in front of the piece.

In the interview with Jeanne Siegel Holzer explicitly mentions motion: “A great feature of the signs is their capacity to move, which I love because it’s so much like the spoken word: you can emphasize things; you can roll and pause, which is the kinetic equivalent to inflection in the voice.” (Jenny Holzer’s Language Games, p. 294) I believe the physical equivalent to the “For Chicago” piece would have been two different groups of people; one reading extremely loud and slowly and the other reading quickly at almost the same but a lower decibel. Although confusing at first it forces one to listen more intently. However I found myself forgetting about actually reading the words and I became more hypnotized by the motion of the lights. Holzer’s intention to force the audience to focus their eye by using motion may have actually caused the opposite effect; I felt I was standing in a room full of insects staring into the light captivated by its kinetic and visual energy. Although the words were powerful I feel the reading experience was overpowered by the visual stimulus.

Another powerful piece was “Thorax” because it’s content had to with the Iraq war. It recounted war stories at the point of view of the American military and the actual words of a young Iraqi man (who was a non-combatant) who experienced it. I had to sit down because I wanted to read the whole story, and it seemed the two different sides of the story were highly conflicted. I found the curved LED’s easier to read and Holzer deliberately made it so in order to get the story out. The last two curved LED’s create an extremely satisfying composition even though they may cut off a part of the sentence. I found this piece much more effective in communicating all three elements in their totality, without losing the content of the writing. At times the lights flashed in a somewhat nausea-inducing manner, but this was deliberate as it complemented the nausea-inducing propaganda laced words of the American military leaders who wrote the words. Although I had knowledge of some of the atrocities of the Iraq war Jenny Holzer’s presentation made the stories feel very personal. The stories told through her pieces made it obvious to me that families were directly affected and it forced me to question, even more so than already, the purpose of the Iraq war.

I was honestly surprised that even though Americans passed the Freedom of Information Act in 1966 forcing the government to reveal its secrets to the public in order to encourage accountability there was so much information withheld from us. Holzer’s reproduced declassified Redaction Paintings revealed to me in truth how free information in America is not, and how much knowledge the government still has the option to withhold from us. There is a piece called "DESERT CROSSING blue white" that reminds one of Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Square” however there is no spiritual undertone intended, it is more of the haunting reality that the U.S. government feels it was necessary to blot out an entire page from its records.

Although the U.S. government in its totality seems to be a machine operated by a robot fashioned out of paper, guns, and bureaucracy the pieces reveal a distinctly human presence in the government. Someone told someone else who told their assistant to blot out certain information deemed by someone to be too sensitive for the American public’s eyes. It divulges the terrifying idea that such choices are not only made by a human being, but are distinctly deliberate decisions.

Due to America’s vastness it is easy to imagine there is some supercomputer that runs everything, but the ghastly reality is that there is a collective mind that maneuvers our entire government, and there is a specifically biased mind that runs our military operations. The government also does nothing to prevent the idea that it is an unstoppable machine. Maybe some data was withheld, such as names, and other identifying information, but an entire page blotted out shows us how little we know, how little we will ever know, and how little we are allowed to know. This lack of knowledge, and keeping of secrets from our own people, is truly more terrifying than a possible attack from some from some unknown source. Holzer’s project forces one to contemplate just how indoctrinated one’s own perspective is, and how deep the propaganda laden commercials to join the Army penetrate one’s mind.

Around the city I have seen advertisements regarding Jenny Holzer’s Protect Project wondering what she was trying to ‘protect’ us from. She is referencing a text detailing plans for the Iraq War and also as mentioned in her interview the power of personal desire. However, I see Holzer’s exhibition as protection from ignorance of the misinformation, propaganda, and indoctrination of the conservative mind of the U.S. government. She is making us aware of how little we actually do control, revealing how evident it is the government does not follow the ideals the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are based on. America is meant to be a country of free speech, free information, and free media however when it comes to information from the government it is not so liberating.

Included in the exhibition was Lustmord, a reworking of a one of Holzer’s older pieces. Lustmord refers to the “rape-slaying, sex-murder, lust killing” that Bosnian-Serb forces used as a war tactic to terrorize Yugoslavian people from 1992-95. At first the text was displayed on actual human bodies and documented with photographs but this time displayed as an archaeological find on a wooden table. There are a number of human bones with silver rings that has the text written on it. I feel the text written on human bodies has more conviction than the bones, although the bones do communicate well the death and mayhem the Bosnian-Serb violence created. The writing on the silver rings force the audience to get more intimate with the bones, making one feel very uncomfortable, however driving home how serious these war-crimes were.

I felt as if Holzer made the text hard to read intentionally in order to echo how difficult it is to imagine such carnage. However I felt I was looking at a museum exhibition of the Theory of Evolution and it removed the humanity from my viewing experience. This may have been a feeling that Holzer intended to show us how callously we now view past events; it may be why she no longer shows the texts on human bodies.

Although Jenny Holzer’s work at first appears to be advertising, mirroring such images such as the ticker tape of the New York Stock Exchange, or LED’s in storefronts, her work has a distinctly human element. Her pieces seem to coerce the audience into participation; they pull from us a need to pay attention to the words, lighting, and physical composition of the LED’s. Without us the work simply would not exist. When I left the building my mind could not help but to linger on what I had just experienced. Maybe it was the lasting effect of the flashing lights, or the power of some of the images the words had created in my head but I left feeling something indescribable. I still do not know if I like the presentation as a whole but I feel it was very effectual as a work of art and Jenny Holzer is unquestionably a talented, conscious, artist.

Whether I liked it or not there was something ineffable in the arrangement of lights, movement and words together that hypnotized all of the people in the museum with me. She explicitly states in her interview, “The trick is to keep the whole thing hypnotic…To hold their attention and also to be appropriate for content” (p. 294). The simple fact that she uses LED signs brings in the modern phenomenon of technological advertising and this idea coupled with her purposeful use of hypnotization makes me happy to know her intentions are not simply to sell me something. She may not have been so “interested in the self-referential aspects” (p. 295) of the LED’s but it still makes the audience conscious of how flooded we are with media in this modern age. It also makes one aware of the effect of so much hypnotization, and whether or not she intended it Holzer’s audience left the building more informed and less a part of the American commercial machine.