Jenny Holzer, Please Change Beliefs (1997)
Upon entering the site, I was quite confused at what was the site about with the website changing a new quote every few seconds and the title of the work “Please Change Beliefs”. After exploring around, I realised that this website is about truism and how the public can vote and change the truism they believe in.
After clicking on the truism, I was brought to the next page where I can vote for the various truism that I believe in.
After choosing the various truisms, I was brought to the results page where you can see the number of votes for each truism. I felt a sense of familiarity due to its similarity to various social media like Instagram where users can hold polls to engage with their followers and poll sites like doodle where users can choose a date that they are free in this coordinates in group meetups.
Looking at all the quotes, I can’t help but curate imaginary scenarios in my head to form up the circumstances of each truism and to judge the justifiability of the quotes. This work intrigues me to ponder over whether our beliefs are facts and does it really hold true to everyone. For example, “Even your family can betray you”. While I can’t relate fully to this quote as I did not experienced this before, I can imagine the circumstances that this can happen and hence, this truism holds true.
Adding on, I always see art in the form of visual, performances and audio. With people defining this metascape as a internet art, I was confused at how should one define art? Technically, it does put forth an idea and thinking that is truism and it engages the audience with its input of one’s own truism and voting system, which parallels with the idea of most artworks. But the unique way of representation of this art piece really intrigues me and challenged the boundary of our definition of art. In my opinion, I am still in a dilemma, not due to me disliking or rejecting this work, but I find it interesting and excited that I am trying to evolve my own thinking to appreciate and understand internet art and many different forms of art. I am still in the phase of picking up new things as I go along and understanding the concept and gist of the art scene.
References:
- https://art.colorado.edu/hiaff/review4da6.html?id=116&cid=7
- https://elmcip.net/creative-work/please-change-beliefs
- http://gallery9.walkerart.org/midobject.html?id=10604
