I 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.
Maybe 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.
The 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"
Jenny 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.
A 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...
Seeing 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].
DFW 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."
This 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”
Noting 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.
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.
> 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.
The 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.
I 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.
I 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.
Just 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-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.
> 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.