Truth and Nostalgia
Jenny Holzer at the Tate Modern
To get some inspiration for the coming project, I took a trip to the Tate Modern to see the Jenny Holzer exhibition. What I found particularly interesting about Holzer's work was her investigation into the everyday that we encounter through language. By taking phrases from textbooks and placing them out of context they are forced to stand alone. I think this allows us in some way to interrogate them differently or to have a new lens on the reality of the messages that we use in everyday language, clichés and maxims. Much of the 'truisms' feel quaint, there is a definite sense of nostalgia that is transmitted into the present through the language of the past.
Holzer prints wallpaper with the sayings that surround you in a small enclosed space. this made me think about the power of language. She spatially grounds the way we use language in different ways throughout the exhibition, which allows different reflections of the same phrases in different contexts. perhaps this is mirroring the way that we respond to different tones, people speaking, printed language differently. In the first room the printed objects were presented in glass cabinets, they felt like relics of a different time.
Dealing with the idea of 'truisms' feels particularly poignant in the current political climate of post-truth politics. The nostalgia that President Trump attempts to incite is based particularly upon a hegemonic notion of truth. The nostalgia is of a time where the only valid truth was that white men in a racially segregated and deeply violent period in US American history. By interrogating the 'truisms' of the past in literary references, I wonder if Holzer is inviting us to explore what it means to be post-truth? or to examine if the 'nostalgic truth' of the past was ever really representative of our realities and truths.
Can truth be claimed by all, or is it reserved for those who establish their politics upon binary logics of race, gender, sexuality, good and bad, right and wrong, right and left? Is nostalgia reserved for a for a time when a binary simplicity was 'good enough for the powerful', so should be good enough for everyone else.
When you are at the bottom and are fighting for your rights, there is no place to have a political nostalgic for a time that was worse. But the powerful who believe that reflecting upon privilege and sharing their power is akin to loosing their power, political nostalgia is a powerful memory to fuel the fear of loss to the 'other'. I will use an example to illustrate this;
Take the case of a gay couple who now have the possibility to be legally recognised in their relationship, if one falls ill, the other legally has the right to visit them as family. I wonder how nostalgia would serve them to be remembering a time before where it was illegal to be openly gay.
My point is that perhaps, as Jose Munoz suggests, queerness is an act of living the future in the present, this sense of futurity nullifies the relevance of a political nostalgia in certain communities. Holzer shows us that the framing of this nostalgic language can either give it power or undermines it.
Her collection of printed plaques that line another room of the exhibition are a continuation of her 'Truisms' collection. These texts offer more political statements. Perhaps it is because they are made into plaques but they appear more like solemn realities that are never talked about but are commonly known to be true. There is something quite bold about the way her work visualises these everyday realities. It reminds me of Judith Butlers work on grievable bodies. Butler explores the idea that only certain bodies and realities are deemed worthy to be grieved in death as a continuation of the violence of marginalised people not being recognised in life.
Inspired by the work of Jenny Holzer, I think it would be interesting to look more at the relationship between truth and nostalgia, and privilege and nostalgia, fear and nostalgia and future and nostalgia.
To get some inspiration for the coming project, I took a trip to the Tate Modern to see the Jenny Holzer exhibition. What I found particularly interesting about Holzer's work was her investigation into the everyday that we encounter through language. By taking phrases from textbooks and placing them out of context they are forced to stand alone. I think this allows us in some way to interrogate them differently or to have a new lens on the reality of the messages that we use in everyday language, clichés and maxims. Much of the 'truisms' feel quaint, there is a definite sense of nostalgia that is transmitted into the present through the language of the past.
Holzer prints wallpaper with the sayings that surround you in a small enclosed space. this made me think about the power of language. She spatially grounds the way we use language in different ways throughout the exhibition, which allows different reflections of the same phrases in different contexts. perhaps this is mirroring the way that we respond to different tones, people speaking, printed language differently. In the first room the printed objects were presented in glass cabinets, they felt like relics of a different time.
Dealing with the idea of 'truisms' feels particularly poignant in the current political climate of post-truth politics. The nostalgia that President Trump attempts to incite is based particularly upon a hegemonic notion of truth. The nostalgia is of a time where the only valid truth was that white men in a racially segregated and deeply violent period in US American history. By interrogating the 'truisms' of the past in literary references, I wonder if Holzer is inviting us to explore what it means to be post-truth? or to examine if the 'nostalgic truth' of the past was ever really representative of our realities and truths.
Can truth be claimed by all, or is it reserved for those who establish their politics upon binary logics of race, gender, sexuality, good and bad, right and wrong, right and left? Is nostalgia reserved for a for a time when a binary simplicity was 'good enough for the powerful', so should be good enough for everyone else.
When you are at the bottom and are fighting for your rights, there is no place to have a political nostalgic for a time that was worse. But the powerful who believe that reflecting upon privilege and sharing their power is akin to loosing their power, political nostalgia is a powerful memory to fuel the fear of loss to the 'other'. I will use an example to illustrate this;
Take the case of a gay couple who now have the possibility to be legally recognised in their relationship, if one falls ill, the other legally has the right to visit them as family. I wonder how nostalgia would serve them to be remembering a time before where it was illegal to be openly gay.
My point is that perhaps, as Jose Munoz suggests, queerness is an act of living the future in the present, this sense of futurity nullifies the relevance of a political nostalgia in certain communities. Holzer shows us that the framing of this nostalgic language can either give it power or undermines it.
Inspired by the work of Jenny Holzer, I think it would be interesting to look more at the relationship between truth and nostalgia, and privilege and nostalgia, fear and nostalgia and future and nostalgia.
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