Northumbria University

Jenny Holzer….

At Baltic….

“Oooh it’s making me feel sick.”

Despite a body of work spanning as far back as the 1970s; I first encountered Jenny Holzer in her first exhibition at Baltic in 2002. A series of text-based works, or Truisms, which borrow sentences from various sources, employing everything from marketing slogans to philosophical writing were projected over facades throughout Tyneside. I remember being stunned at such overt slogans in the streets calling out to be read and ingested, and in 2010, with her anticipated return, I wonder whether they will have the same impact when contained inside an institution.

The first thing I noticed as I walked towards the Baltic is that actually, all of her work is not indoors. We are confronted with the immense “The Beginning of the War Will Be Secret” hanging on the exterior wall, an announcement that Jenny Holzer is back in town.

As I always do, I headed straight up to the fifth floor to capture an ariel view: and a spectacular one it is. This is the first time in the tour of the show that her floor piece, For Chicago, has been read from above. It comprises of a continuous flow of LED text running along a conveyor belt structure, where once on the floor it seems to act as an enticement towards the magnificent “Monument” on the other side of the wall. A 20-foot-high sculpture, comprising of 22 semi-circular bands emblazoned with the artist’s Truisms and Inflammatory Essays, throws out ironic sayings that always seem to relate to your own personal experiences. Our eyes begin to hurt, and we literally can’t these ignore these messages as they continue to flash in front of us, even as we walk out of the room. The layering and bombardment of text echoes what our eyes and minds are subjected to on a daily basis, we’re merely seeing it all at once here.

On level three, the subject takes a more political tone with the display of her redaction paintings. The series, taken from original official documents, depicts handprints belonging to US soldiers accused of crimes in Iraq. They have been defaced with heavy marks to erase the prints that differentiate them. By refusing to separate the convicted from the wrongly accused, the artist demonstrates the failure of war to differentiate.

Holzer takes classified documents from the US Government, made public under the Freedom of Information Act, and creates LED sculptures displaying this information repeatedly in bright, flashing, almost blinding fashion. These tremendous pieces demand our attention, while simultaneously being difficult to stand and read. The reference to colour field painting is apparent here, as the pinks, blues, yellows and reds fill the room, bouncing off the gloss painted walls. The documents in question range from emails between US Military officials, emails discussing the interest in oil as the cause of the conflict, and documents regarding prisoner questioning methods. By touring the show and bringing it to the city, it makes me feel as though I’m not as far removed from these issues as I thought I was.

Today I spent time moving a projector around a room while I filmed and projected live from the installation. I found that when projected on to a wall with the projector on the floor; with room for people to walk in front of it; the pierced marks are projected onto them. They become “inside” the projection like they would have been inside the installation. This is an encouraged interaction, which in turn relates to the interaction they would have with the blog.

This also (although I must do more reading) brings ideas of Freud’s transparent nature of projection, and it acting as an “externalisation of an internal process.” A transfer of thoughts and ideas (literally here) onto another person.

I also practiced placing blockages on the lens of the projector in order to make the image more immersed on the wall, avoiding the harsh lines of the camera lens. I need to decide whether this is the right decision, because if it was viewed in reality, the hanging paper would take the same form, almost like a “page,” another communicative device. What other meanings does the camera eye and frame bring?

This is what I have been using as my statement up until now. While I think it covers some integral points, my work seems to be ever changing, and I think some key questions are missing. Ideas of investigation, functionality and presentation….

Art is the way into conversation, yet thinking, talking and writing about what is essentially a visual process is one of the most difficult things for an artist to do.

The “medium” of the blogosphere opens up a space for a critical and analytical dialogue between me and my work, creating a harmonious cycle where, while the blog is the driving force for the artwork, the content is also about the creation of the art itself. This, in turn, creates a battle between aesthetic values and practical realities of production, resting somewhere between our bodily experience and our intellectual understanding of communication.

The fragmentary images are echoes of unread words and a translation of them is not necessarily required. They form visual patterns, or codes, which play a dual role as imagery and as building blocks of meaning. Presented as a range of subtle processes of exchange, in contrast with mass interaction; each piece of work has the possibility to last forever, change or be erased completely.

Paradoxical qualities dominate: public/privacy, fragment/whole, reveal/conceal, substance/ light. The notion of time is also central to the operation of my practice, constantly shifting between immersed and immediate studio time. In order to blog, I must experience the entire length of the day, how I use the time determines what I blog. The writing is situated in a public arena, where typing is a very quick and direct activity, this is in complete disparity with the long hours spent labouring over an artwork in my private studio space.

When making work, a contemplative space is created wherein I am more fully able to reflect on my own sensory experience. I wish to create a similar understanding for the viewer where they can experience the familiar through my work; with mark making acting as a form of contact between artist and medium, artist and audience and audience and artwork.

I’d love to create a set of profiles, similar to the blogger profile, where I send out the same piece of text to a number of people and discover where that can lead. This only came into my head at 8am and some thought on it today might help me to decide who I would like to do this with.

“All art is useless”…how can it gain a function like the blog does?

Could the blog get projected, and the recorded artwork be placed on a monitor? If it is able to be scrolled around and viewed in a similar way to the blog then a juxtaposition occurs.

Will projecting the blog-which documents my thoughts and experiences-alongside the static image of the installation-which will be one of many experiments-elevate it so that it becomes more on a par with the artwork, and so more important?