Toolkits for College Core Instructors
Here you will find adaptable materials for teaching with Jenny Holzer’s YOU BE MY ALLY in UChicago Core courses. These toolkits are designed around a set of themes, which may resonate with your particular course.
- Meaning and context
- Authorship and authority
- Critical reflections on the history of canon-building
- Reading as public, reading as private
See below for more details. Each toolkit contains a set of modular activities and prompts, as well as a ready-to-use PowerPoint with relevant images. These are available on Box via the link below.
Please note you must log in with your UChicago credentials to access the Box folder. If you are a college instructor at a different institution and would like to use these materials in your teaching, please email Maggie (mkbwitz@uchicago.edu) and Zsofi (zsvn@uchicago.edu).
In addition to these toolkits, the Box folder also contains the following:
- Notes, slides, and pre-recorded video lectures for (1) an introduction to Holzer’s practice and (2) an overview of Holzer’s 2020 project, YOU BE MY ALLY
- A blurb you may choose to include in your syllabus, describing the project and prompting student interaction.
YOU BE MY ALLY, 2020. LED truck. Text: Sappho, fragment 1 from If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Anne Carson, first published by Alfred A. Knopf, © 2002 by the author. Reprinted by permission of the author and Aragi Inc. All rights reserved. Chicago, Illinois, USA. © 2020 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo: Christopher Dilts
Toolkit #1
Meaning and context
How do processes of decontextualization and recontextualization shift meaning? How does context imbue words with different types of power and authority? Holzer’s project invites viewers to experience texts differently––to consider words dynamically, on an architectural scale, and projected into space. Does inserting or projecting old words into the here and now transform the ability of those words to make meaning in the here and now?
In these activities, students will practice:
- identifying different types of context and their interaction
- comparing iterations of the same words presented in different mediums over the course of Holzer’s project.
This toolkit will enable students to:
- examine the impact that visual / physical aspects of an encounter with a text have upon meaning.
- assess the resonance and relevance of texts within our contemporary moment and local space.
YOU BE MY ALLY, 2020. Augmented reality app. Text: “Sex in Public” by Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, © 1998 by the University of Chicago Press, from Critical Inquiry, Winter 1998. Used with permission of the authors; The Case of Wagner by Friedrich Nietzsche, English translation by Walter Kaufmann, © 1967 by Random House, Inc. Used with permission of Penguin Random House LLC; Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog, © 1998 by the author. Used with permission of Penguin Random House South Africa. Installation: University of Chicago, Illinois, USA, 2020. © 2020 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo: Christopher Dilts
Toolkit #2
Authorship and identity
From early on in her practice, Holzer has experimented with anonymity and its relationship to the power and authority of texts. She has also explored the first person and the second person as routes towards inviting and inciting action. “I like to think of my work as useful,” she has said, and she aims “to try to make something effective.” How can text––especially an excerpt of a text––be mobilized in service of a goal or an argument? When does citation, or the mobilization of another’s voice, generate power?
In these activities, students will practice:
- Comparing text fragments as they appear in their original context vs. within Holzer’s AR experience
- Analyzing the ways in which text fragments contribute to larger goals / message of Holzer’s project.
This toolkit will enable students to:
- Consider the role of author identity v. anonymity within different contexts.
- Imagine mobilizing text fragments in their own writing.
YOU BE MY ALLY, 2020. Augmented reality app. Text: Stesichoros, fragment 192 PMG as cited by Plato, Phaedrus 243a, from Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse by Anne Carson, first published by Alfred A. Knopf, © 1998 by the author. Reprinted by permission of the author and Aragi Inc. All rights reserved; Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon, © 1952 by Éditions du Seuil. English translation by Richard Philcox, © 2008 by the translator. Used with permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.; Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog, © 1998 by the author. Used with permission of Penguin Random House South Africa. Installation: University of Chicago, Illinois, USA, 2020. © 2020 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo: Christopher Dilts
Toolkit #3
Critical reflections on the history of canon-building
Throughout her career, Holzer’s projects have relied upon what she once described as “skewed content,” and Holzer’s engagement with the texts that make up the Core in this project can certainly be described as such. Her project offers the opportunity for critical reflection on the history of the texts included in the Core and the urgency of continuing to reconfigure and diversify Core texts. What role can education play in amplifying voices that have been silenced in the past and in making absences visible?
In these activities, students will practice:
- Discussing the history of the Core curriculum and how it fits within broader assumptions about what constitutes the “canon.”
- Evaluating the efficacy of Holzer’s “skewed content” or selective amplification approach in reenvisioning the canon.
This toolkit will enable students to:
- Identify the values and violences of continuing to read canonical texts.
- Imagine other means of reenvisioning, expanding, or exploding the canon and its relationship to the Core curriculum.
YOU BE MY ALLY, 2020. LED truck. Text: Phaedrus by Plato, English translation by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff, © 1995 by the translators. Used with permission of Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Chicago, Illinois, USA © 2020 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo: Christopher Dilts
Toolkit #4
Reading as public, reading as private
Starting in the 1970s, Holzer emphasized the import of making work that operated in a public, urban environment. This project––in its dependence upon both AR that operates from an individual’s personal device and highly-visible, large-scale LED trucks, moves back and forth between public and private processes of reading, viewing, and discussing. How does the process of reading––reading privately, reading collectively, reading publicly; seeing, listening––impact what is gleaned and what sort of conversation is kindled as a result of that reading?
In these activities, students will practice:
- Examining the public dimension of Holzer’s art practice
- Discussing how the notion of “public art” and the boundaries between public and private are complicated in this particular project
This toolkit will enable students to:
- Investigate the relationship between the often private process of reading or writing and the cumulative cultural, political, and/or public impact that texts can have upon the world.
Bannner image: YOU BE MY ALLY, 2020. Augmented reality app. Installation: University of Chicago, Illinois, USA, 2020. © 2020 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY Photo: Christopher Dilt