Poetry

At Rockefeller Center and The New York Public Library, light projections of poems that detail hope, pain, and longing will envelop the buildings, fusing location and projection. Countering the ubiquity of the sound bite, Holzer offers a range and plurality of viewpoints and voices.

Selected poems from For the City

Fadhil Al-Azzawi, “The Valley of the Beasts”
from THE MIRACLE MAKER

Mohja Kahf, “Hijab Scene #7”
from EMAILS FROM SCHEHERAZAD

Yehuda Amichai, “Songs of Zion the Beautiful,” “Wildpeace,” “And Who Will Remember the Rememberers," “In My Life, On My Life”
from THE SELECTED POETRY OF YEHUDA AMICHAI and OPEN CLOSED OPEN

Henri Cole “Necessary and Impossible”
from MIDDLE EARTH

Mahmoud Darwish “He Embraces His Murderer,” “I Belong There”
from UNFORTUNATELY, IT WAS PARADISE

Wislawa Szymborska “The Joy of Writing,” “Could Have,” “Children of Our Age,” “Some People,” “In Praise of Feeling Bad about Yourself,” “The End and the Beginning,” “Parting with a View,” “Tortures”
from NEW AND COLLECTED

Documents

For the first time in New York, Holzer will project recently declassified and other sensitive United States government documents at Bobst Library, New York University. The artist’s public presentation of approximately 60 documents explores the problem of achieving a just and workable balance between secrecy and transparency. Under the landmark Freedom of Information Act passed in 1966, all of the selected texts are now public record and available to anyone with access to the Internet or libraries such as Bobst, though some remain heavily redacted. 

Thomas Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive, with whom Holzer worked while researching the documents, said, "She turns every surface into a page, she illuminates not only texts but perception, and by projecting these secrets into the night she transforms the words of power into transitory bolts of lightning."

Click here for an essay by Thomas Blanton