writing jail

Joan Simon: …What’s ahead?

Jenny Holzer: Trying to write something again. I haven’t locked myself up recently. As soon as I finish the next round of public pieces—in Europe and the US—I have to go to writing jail.

Joan Simon: The artists that have fed into your thinking are an extremely diverse lot. Among the earliest is writer, artist and printer William Blake.

Jenny Holzer: When I read Songs of Innocence (1779-c. 1800), for the first time I was entirely convinced that there was good in the world, including people.

Joan Simon: And his illustrations?

Jenny Holzer: I liked the fact that Blake was able to have the text and images inhabit the same space.

Joan Simon: Was there any one poem in particular?

Jenny Holzer: There is a lamb poem with just one little sinister turn that mentions a neck.

Joan Simon: ‘Little Lamb / Here I am, / Come and lick, / My white neck.’

Jenny Holzer: That’s the one. Then from Songs of Experience:

     If thought is life
     And strength and breath
     And the want
     Of thought is death.

“Jenny Holzer and Joan Simon in Conversation, June 1997, New York”
pressPlay: contemporary artists in conversation (Phaidon Press, 2005)