Jess, the super awesome rocker Kathleen Hanna, and I went to the Whitney Museum to see the latest exhibit of Jenny Holzer, titled Protect, Protect, last week.
If you don't know Holzer's work, you should definitely check out her stuff online. In short, she does a lot of interesting installation and text work, often on themes dealing with security, leadership, morality, and happiness. She likes to infiltrate public space, and see how words and ideas are changed by their contexts. She works in a variety of media, including LED signs, plaques, benches, stickers, and T-shirts. I first learned about her from my brother, who told me about her truisms (the girl in the shirt pictured here is sporting one).
This latest exhibit is very focused on security (thus the title) and includes provocative truisms running on LED screens and poster-sized redacted reports from the military in Iraq, as well as a table of bones and some amazing looking redacted hand prints blown up to a freakish size. It was an overwhelming exhibit--both physically and emotionally. Taking in all of the horrific redacted material brought the war home in a soul crushing way, and keeping up with the LED work had our eyes blurring and a touch of a headache.
In other words, expect to leave with broken heart and brain, but also enraged and inspired. If you're not in the NY-area, her work is very assessable all over the interweb so have at it through the cushion of the screen.
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I've loved Jenny Holzer since first year university... I used to (sometimes still do) write her Truisms out on my notebooks... she encourages people to take them and spread them around.
The girl in the shirt was also an active artist during the late '70s... I'm drawing a blank on her name and it's driving me crazy right now.
i saw this exhibit when it opened in chicago. it was so intense. especially the leds...i felt like my brain was going to explode. and the reports were heartbreaking and horrifying. it was really cool though...i hope people can take a min to check her out.
I would love to see that exhibit. It must've been extremely moving, the way you described it. I'm extremely into poetry. I particularly loved this:
Words
Landmines
Exploding
Love and Hate.
Just. Wow. Thanks for posting.
I really wish i had been invited on that museum trip. the exhibit and the company would do wonders for my currently mid-westernized brain.
I was thinking the same thing.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and ask the stupid question.
How is "abuse of power comes as no surprise" a truism? Or are they not really truisms? Or am I using a different definition of "truism" (I think of it as a statement which is logically always true)?
That isn't really what truism means. It's sort of the equivalent of a platitude. The link to Holzer's list should clarify what she's getting at; so should the Wikipedia entry on truism.
According to wikipedia, "A truism is a claim that is so obvious or self-evident as to be hardly worth mentioning, except as a reminder or as a rhetorical or literary device." And the second definition is "a sentence which asserts incomplete truth conditions for a proposition may be regarded as a truism." Seems more like a tautology.
But many of the "Truisms" aren't. I agree with most of them, but they aren't truisms.
Right, a lot of them are cynical or political statements of opinion passing for fact, and those really annoy me, even when I agree with them.
I can appreciate Holzer for her creativity in presenting her art, but her truisms drive me up a wall and I really don't like her art involving them.
The way I see it is that in calling intentionally controversial statements "Truisms", Holzer is asking us to question what gets labeled as a truism.
Juliette Lewis, Joan Jett, Suzi Quatro, Sheryl Crow, Shirley Manson, Nina Hagen, Dolly Parton, Brody Dalle, Blondie, Kathleen Hanna - for us the future! )))