6 ms·
Truisms (1978)
- blacksqr 7y ago"The new disease came."
- bschne 7y agoI keep randomly returning to these, some great stuff in there. I also this quote of Jenny Holzer from another artwork: > There is a period when it is clear that you have gone wrong but you continue. Sometimes there is a luxurious amount of time before anything bad happens.
- platz 7y agowhat artwork?
- nmcfarl 7y agoJenny Holzer is an artist who’s work contains a lot of text and this text file is lifted from some of her work in the truisms series. It might actually be the entire text of the series. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=TRUISMS+(1978-1983)+JENNY+HOLZER https://duckduckgo.com/?q=TRUISMS+(1978-1983)+JENNY+HOLZER
- platz 7y agoi was asking about OP's "another artwork"
- inetsee 6y agoA quick search on "artist Jenny Holzer" turns up plenty of results, including a comprehensive Wikipedia page, an Artsy page, and quite a few others. A quick look indicates that a fair amount of her work includes test based pieces, including this example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Holzer#/media/File:Jenny_Holzer,_%22Xenon%22.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Holzer#/media/File:Jenny...
- platz 6y agoIt appears the OP's quote was from "The Living Series"
- bschne 6y agoYes, it's from a work called "The Living Series", see here: https://www.lofty.com/products/jenny-holzer-the-living-series-there-is-a-period-when-it-is-clear-1-82iuq https://www.lofty.com/products/jenny-holzer-the-living-serie...
- adrianmonk 6y agoMaybe this is Holzer's point (or maybe it's humorous), but I've come to believe that that "luxury" is one of the most dangerous things there is. The more indirect and the slower your feedback, the easier it is to form habits and get accustomed to believing in a "reality" which is anything but reality. I used to feel like it was better to have this luxury because who wants consequences to be swift. Doesn't that feel harsh and uncomfortable? Yes, but now I realize it's better overall. At best delayed (or dulled) consequences are like procrastination: face it now, or face it later when it's harder. And at worst, it's a path to ruin because later might be too late. Of course you don't want to go to the other extreme. There should be a balance.
- bschne 6y agoThe way I read it is as a somewhat ironic comment on how a lot of people, after doing something they shouldn't or avoiding something they should do, already know their mistake way before correcting it or suffering the consequences, and just don't act accordingly. I'm not 100% sure on the "luxurious", but for me it reads as if saying "you know you've done wrong, you know it's going to come back to haunt you, but you're reveling in the inaction/avoidance in the meantime"
- rhezab 7y agoDFW in IJ: "The clichéd directives are a lot more deep and hard to actually do. To try and live by instead of just say... So then at forty-six years or age I came here to live by clichés... One day at a time. Easy does it. First things first. Courage is fear that has said its prayers. Ask for help. Thy will not mine be done. It works if you work it. Grow or go. Keep coming back."
- luspr 7y ago"ANY SURPLUS IS IMMORAL" "AUTOMATION IS DEADLY" ... wait, what?
- ErikAugust 7y agoSecond one: A machine gun comes to mind. Of course, I am not sure these are truisms.
- iron0013 7y agoThe title of the work (or rather the title of her entire oeuvre in this style) is “Truisms”, but I don’t think that means they’re necessarily intended to literally be truisms. There’s a lot of humor and irony involved.
- platz 6y agoANY SURPLUS IS IMMORAL if you're operating efficiently, and generate or take only what you need, you aren't generating surplus. surplus could be read as greed, decadence, or even waste AUTOMATION IS DEADLY do it yourself, retain the know-how yourself. self-sufficience. don't rely on externalities. natural processes are more, well, natural. machines tend to exploit and create imbalance.
- tgv 6y ago> surplus could be read as greed, decadence, or even waste Or as a buffer. E.g., who knew that overcapacity in a hospital could be beneficial? So once more, the veracity of such statements depends on the context.
- platz 6y agoYour statement is 100% correct but misses the entire point https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22854475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22854475
- dvh 6y agoALL HAIL THE DARK LORD OF THE TWIN MOONS
- shok3001 7y ago> truism: a statement that is obviously true and says nothing new or interesting. Just scanning through these I wouldn't label all of them "truisms." For example, > ANY SURPLUS IS IMMORAL and > AUTOMATION IS DEADLY I wouldn't consider either of these "obviously true."
- andreisbc 7y agoIt's a truism for whoever is obvious to :)
- whoisjuan 7y agoJust to be clear these are not really truisms. This is an art piece by Jenny Holzer and its name is "Truisms" (doesn't necessarily mean that they are all actual truisms, that's just the name she gave to this particular work). In "Truisms" she created printed versions of an erudite reading list she compiled when she was a student. She distributed them anonymously by pasting printed versions around NYC's fences and walls. (https://www.sutori.com/story/pop-culture-and-art-jenny-holzer--zsHvbvCpNY4Ebt9xRjAdpRRV https://www.sutori.com/story/pop-culture-and-art-jenny-holze...). She also did leaflets and other printed versions of this. All of Holzer's art concepts are very much like this. Her goal is to use public venues as a medium to deliver thought-provoking ideas and display daring written commentary.
- triangleman 7y agoShe also created LED signs that cycled through these phrases. Also for a more artistic rendition on the web: https://mfx.dasburo.com/art/truisms.html https://mfx.dasburo.com/art/truisms.html
- dejj 6y agoDouble checked to be sure that "KILL ALL HUMANS" is not among them
- iron0013 7y agoThis doesn’t include a lot of post-1983 Truisms which are just as good. My favorite might be “Someone Wants To Cut A Hole In You And Fuck You Through It, Buddy”
- willchang 6y agoHere's another list of them: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~field/holzer/living.txt https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~field/holzer/living.txt
- stronglikedan 6y agoThose seem more like musings than truisms.
- ak39 6y agoCALM IS MORE CONDUCTIVE TO CREATIVITY THAN IS ANXIETY Conductive or conducive?
- juliend2 6y ago> YOU HAVE TO HURT OTHERS TO BE EXTRAORDINARY I wonder what he meant by that.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoI believe that the author is a she.
- TomMckenny 6y agoI presume it's an observation, not advice. That often those who are called exceptional have some skeletons in their closest. That there are more statues of Jefferson Davis than Harriet Tubman.
- human_person 6y agoI read it as a warning. Life is full of tradeoffs, to be extraordinary in one area requires you to neglect or ignore other aspects of life. In the end people will be hurt.
- sizzzzlerz 6y agoDON'T TRUST EVERYTHING YOU READ ON THE INTERNET. -- Abraham Lincoln
- DenisM 6y agoTruism is a truism is a truism. I dare you to top this.
- hbarka 6y agoI love how there’s contradictions, like how for “All good things come to those who wait” meets “Early bird catches the worm”.
- sixstringtheory 6y agoI guess a good response to this is > A SENSE OF TIMING IS THE MARK OF GENIUS
- sixstringtheory 6y agoSome good couplets... As corollaries for the hardest problem in computer science: > A NAME MEANS A LOT JUST BY ITSELF > SYMBOLS ARE MORE MEANINGFUL THAN THINGS THEMSELVES As advice to myself because I love refactoring: > ABSTRACTION IS A TYPE OF DECADENCE > DECADENCE CAN BE AN END IN ITSELF
- DavidVoid 6y agoSeeing Jenny Holzer on here was a pleasant surprise! ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE is probably one of my favorite of her truisms. On a similar note, her Inflammatory Essays (1979-1982) are a good read too [1]. Her more recent work Projections doesn't involve much of her own writing but it's interesting nonetheless (both the texts and the medium). She talks about it a bit in this video [2]. And I quite like her Redaction Paintings that were made from redacted military files [3]. [1] https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/holzer-inflammatory-essays-65434/10 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/holzer-inflammatory-ess... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeOOFKzQxS0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeOOFKzQxS0 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Cidvahl6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Cidvahl6c
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- segfaultbuserr 6y agoWhat is the context/background of this artwork?
- gowld 6y agoconvertcase.net to the rescue.
- pmiller2 6y agoNoting the date and utexas.edu, I was expecting something from the EWD archive. After some mild disappointment, this did seem to actually feed my underlying desire for some curmudgeonly wisdom.
- fineiguess 6y agohttp://catandgirl.com/girl-plays-games/ http://catandgirl.com/girl-plays-games/
- tingletech 6y agoI used to eat at her green table sometimes when I worked in the cafeteria right next door https://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/artist/holzer.html https://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/artist/holzer.html