Jenny Holzer | YOU BE MY ALLY

YOU BE MY ALLY, 2020

Augmented reality app

Text: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792; Citizen by Claudia Rankine, © 2014 by the author. Used with permission of Graywolf Press.

Installation: University of Chicago, 2020

© 2020 Jenny Holzer, ARS

Photo: Christopher Dilts

YOU BE MY ALLY employs the power of language - harnessing technology to engage with pivotal social issues and activism.

02. Solution - Harnessing technology for social activism

Responding to the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 crisis, Holition lent its expertise in the realm of immersive technologies and augmented reality to bring Holzer’s public artwork, YOU BE MY ALLY,  to life in collaboration with the University of Chicago.

Underscoring the power of language and literature, YOU BE MY ALLY  featured 29 text excerpts drawn from the university’s Core curriculum, selected by Holzer in collaboration with UChicago students and faculty. The artwork featured text by distinguished writers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Helen Keller, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Friedrich Nietzsche, Plato, Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf.

A free, web-based AR app allowed users to see the texts as virtual light projections on the facades of architecturally significant buildings throughout the University's campus. A "use anywhere" component of the app lets users animate these powerful texts in their surroundings.

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, 2020

© 2020 Jenny Holzer, ARS

Photo: Christopher Dilts

03. Insight - The power of language

At a time when physical limitations have almost become the new norm, YOU BE MY ALLY also responded to the COVID-19 crisis by creating an experience that brought art directly to users through augmented reality technology. 

Through the app, users could project the texts selected by Holzer and UChicago onto their surroundings anywhere in the world, whether on or off-campus. It enabled a broad audience to engage these historic texts and to consider the impact of public speech in a democracy in the weeks leading up to the 2020 U.S. elections.

Created in partnership with technology consultant Mark Hellar and award-winning London-based creative innovation studio Holition, YOU BE MY ALLY  was a highly engaging public artwork that aptly demonstrated how the relationship between technology, human experience, and creativity can generate collective impact.