ART REVIEW : ‘Televised Texts’: A New Wave From Holzer

When the 1990 Venice Biennale opens to the public next week, the United States Pavilion will be filled with the flashing signs and chiseled sarcophagi of Jenny Holzer, the only woman to represent the U.S. in the exhibition’s 93-year history and an artist for whom poetic language can be a visual form of unusual power.

As an adjunct to this venerable international exhibition, Holzer also has produced a group of disarming television spots, ranging in length from 10 seconds to 15 seconds, for local broadcast in Italy. Those who’d rather not brave the Biennale’s throngs can still see Holzer’s art merely by staying home and turning on the television. And so, in fact, can residents of Los Angeles. In an adventurous programming move, the Long Beach Museum of Art has undertaken to air a variety of Holzer’s spots on KCOP-TV Channel 13.

This on-air exhibition, which was scheduled to begin in the wee hours this morning and continue at various times through Saturday, is one component of a group show at the museum called “Video Poetics.” Featuring videotapes by Dara Birnbaum, Gary Hill, Scott Rankin, Steina Vasulka and six other artists, together with an interactive videodisc installation by Bill Seaman, the museum presentation seeks to examine the ways in which numerous artists have exploited correspondences between poetic form and the structure, language and electronic time of video.

Sent out over the public airwaves, Holzer’s “Televised Texts” constitute the public art component of the museum show. Like not a few other public art projects, this one generated a bit of nervous controversy even before it saw the light of day. Initially, the Long Beach Museum had purchased time during regular commercial and program breaks on two local stations, not one. At the 11th hour, KTLA-TV Channel 5 changed its mind and pulled the plug on “Televised Texts.”

Both stations had informed the museum that sponsor identification tags would have to be appended to the spots, which Holzer agreed to allow and exhibition curator Michael Nash added. According to Nash, KTLA also explained that it had decided not to sell the air-time because the content of the spots was found to be “too provocative to meet commercial broadcast standards.”

KTLA broadcast standards administrator Roger Field said, “In a few spots they had utilized what we would consider subliminal perception,” which he described as an attempt to convey information below the normal level of audience awareness. “There was some questionable material in some of the commercials,” Field added, which he believed might offend some viewers. He did not identify what that material was.

Having seen all the spots, it’s hard to imagine what could possibly offend. Whatever the case, kudos to KCOP for pressing ahead with this bold and refreshing incitement to independent thought.

Holzer uses a variety of simple formats for her brief spots (many of which, incidentally, were created in 1989 for cablecast on MTV). Words, singly or clustered, emerge from or disappear into the blackness of a blank screen, or the fuzzy “snow” of static. Occasionally, the words flip up, like flash cards. Some are silent, some feature voice-over, and some are given an air of urgency by jangling bells and whistles. A few texts trail a phosphorescent glow, like a comet in the night sky.

Holzer’s phrases are printed in upper-case white letters, without punctuation. As a result, they read less like firm statements or pointed questions than passing “thoughts.” Those thoughts are wide-ranging and diverse.

Among the 24 different aphorisms that will appear on KCOP, most of them familiar from the artist’s earlier signboards and carved benches and sarcophagi, are these, which will be slipped in between ads for detergent and laxatives, the evening news and new-car showrooms:

* PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT

* EXPIRING FOR LOVE IS BEAUTIFUL BUT STUPID

* IT’S A GIFT TO THE WORLD NOT TO HAVE BABIES

* RAISE BOYS AND GIRLS THE SAME WAY

* ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE

* PRIVATE PROPERTY CREATED CRIME

* YOU ARE TRAPPED ON THE EARTH SO YOU WILL EXPLODE

* SLIPPING INTO MADNESS IS GOOD FOR THE SAKE OF COMPARISON

The most intriguing aspect of Holzer’s assorted texts will not be found in what they tell you, but in what they withhold. Whose voice is speaking in these aphorisms? Many of the phrases seem to contradict each other. Tone varies widely. The style of writing changes from one to the next.

As they flash by on the screen, these TV texts seem the utterances of a host of different people: teacher, psychiatrist, ideologue, huckster, philosopher, comedian, crank, technician, madman, novelist. Accustomed to the singularly expressive voice of “artist,” we get thrown for a loop in the face of this seeming crowd.

The most potent content of Holzer’s art is its steadfast refusal to succumb to homogenization, to the collective forces of contemporary culture that seek to pigeon-hole people and degrade human differences into a lowest common denominator. This central feature of her work might well be what disturbed, consciously or not, the broadcast standards department at KTLA.

Broadcast television is, after all, the great and all-pervasive homogenizer of modern life. Its programming relentlessly disintegrates difference in a continuing effort to sell the largest possible audience to an advertiser. Accustomed to speaking with the singular, bland voice of “commercial television,” a station might easily be thrown for a loop by Jenny Holzer’s uncooperative rabble.

“Jenny Holzer: Televised Texts” may be seen daily through May 19 on KCOP Channel 13. Spots air today at approximately 11:13 a.m. and 12:15 p.m., and at 1:45, 2:32 and 3:10 a.m.; actual airplay may occur up to 10 minutes before or after the times listed.