I took a trip to the MassMoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) this weekend and had the opportunity to experience the Jenny Holzer PROJECTIONS installation.
You begin by entering the blacked-out doors of the football field-sized gallery space and are immediately greeted by the bright lights of duel-mounted projectors and the fast moving words that they cast on the floor ceiling and walls. As you walk down the stairs into the vast area, you are next confronted by couch sized bean bags that serve as obstacles for the images to gently wash over along with the human inhabitants. As you recline to enjoy the extraordinary scene, you begin to notice the calm serenity of silence as you and those around you begin to explore the meaning of the text.
While the intentions of the projected poems (View with a Grain of Sand Poems New and Collected: 1957-1997, copyright 1993, 1998 by Wislawa Szymborska) for this particular work were unclear to me at first, I began to realize that the experience would have different meaning for each person who inhabits the space. I found this idea particularly interesting because of my participation in this course, The Power of the Image. In this case you not only take in the image visually, but you add to it and alter it depending on how, when, and where you view it. This exhibit not only asks you to rely on sight or sound to connect with it but encourages you to notice how your immediate environment affects your interpretation of the piece and to inhabit the image at that moment in time.
To learn more about this exhibit click here: http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?=339
-Jennifer
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