Jenny Holzer: A major-league artist is on the line, with her eye on the world

For more than 20 years, Jenny Holzer has been using words and language to create art that speaks volumes. With a clear vision of the possibilities offered by emerging technology, she has been pointing the way with electronic signs and large xenon projections that both illuminate and provoke. Here, in a technological leap worthy of a pioneer like Holzer, she talks to Ingrid Sischy in the first-ever interview conducted on a state-of-the-art, static-free Vertu cell phone.

INGRID SISCHY. So, Jenny, tell me what you've been working on lately. Have you got any exhibitions coming up over the next few months?

JENNY HOLZER: I'm doing something in Oslo. We're in the process of inventing electronic icicles. [laughs]

IS: Whoa.

JH: They'll be hanging on the eaves of a big building there, so that will be interesting--to see if we can climb. And I'm projecting xenon in Goslar, a medieval town in Germany.

IS: Have you been traveling a lot lately?

JH: I've been traveling all the time.

IS: What is your experience of the world in this moment? What are you noticing?

JH: People are tense and sad, apprehensive or, depending on the person, belligerent.

IS: Something I noticed immediately after September 11 was this real defensiveness towards art or individuals who questioned the government's foreign policy and subsequent response to the attacks. And your work has always been about critical consciousness. Do you feel it's a difficult moment to be creating work that speaks out?

JH: Yes. I was aghast at how, for example, a television commentator said that Susan Sontag's piece [published in The New Yorker, in which she voiced a dissenting opinion to the statements being made by public figures in the wake of the attacks] was criminal. Sontag was one of the first to attempt to explain why the attack happened, and explanation is valuable. At times it has seemed inadvisable to think out loud, but if you can't reflect, how can you prevent? In this country, and in the art community, people have been able, even encouraged, to see things in the round--to describe events from every point of view. If this is lost, it's a shame and it's dangerous.

IS: You are an artist of consciousness. In terms of the kind of work you're doing now, can you tell me what's going through your head, what you think your struggles are in terms of your work?

JH: I keep going back to Parable, the piece that I started after the attack. I am afraid of the subject, so I'll leave it, return and not progress with the writing. I hunted everything from my feelings, to hard accounts from friends, to reportage, and made a synthesis. The process has me remember that few want to hear about women--even when the murder of women is central, and their abuse and invisibility part of, and analogous to, what has contributed to the "real" crisis.

IS: Mm-hmm. (pauses) One of the most amazing things that I saw in the weeks after September 11 were photos of Afghan women who had reclaimed the country's radio station. And you could see the joy that they felt to be back at the radio station, and you could sense this joy about what technology could do. And when you look at what's going on in the Middle East, you realize that it's a completely different world today because of television and technology. Everything is really changing because of these media. You began working with technology back in 1982, first with electronic signs then with LED. How have your feelings about it changed over the years?

JH: I like your image of the women retaking the radio station; it seems equivalent in some way to what electronic signs have afforded me. Here was a techno chance to think about what was important to me, and then to transmit, and a chance to imagine what might be of use to other people, and an opportunity to send it to them. You know, this is a life.

IS: It is. And now, 20 years later, you're still sending electronic messages.

JH: Yeah, and I'm trying to be less of a dinosaur. I've been working on pieces for wireless phones, since every kid, at least in Europe and Japan, is SMSing [sending instant text messages].

IS: Wow. So you're working on pieces that would actually be electronic signs in telephones?

JH: The phones would display or say the messages. I like to provide content for gizmos, and people are living on their phones. [laughs]

IS: It amuses me to hear you talking about being a technological dinosaur. For me, you are one of the only people who really took advantage of the creative/critical possibilities of technology. But, partly in order to conserve your ability to see what you're doing, you've never actually become the technological person yourself, right? You always work with a team.

JH: My tech skill is to recognize people who are smarter than I am! [both laugh] When I was 16 in Fort Lauderdale, pretending to be a college kid, I was always the one who wanted to dance with the guys from MIT. [both laugh]

IS: That's great. So do you actually have a cell phone?