Neo-Conceptualist Jenny Holzer Contributes To HIV Memorial App

The Neo-conceptual artist Jenny Holzer, who is commonly known for her LED light pieces that utilise the rhetoric of modern information systems to address the politics of discourse, is contributing to a new app which is linked to a memorial in New York commemorating the men, women and children who have died from HIV and Aids.

The app – which will be produced by Google – will accompany the artist’s text installation for the New York City Aids Memorial, which is due to be unveiled near the former St Vincent’s hospital in the West Village in 2016.

“Excerpts from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman will be the text on the granite paving stones. The Whitman poem is a beauty from a man in full and glad possession of his body,” Holzer tells the Art Newspaper. “The app should add content from visitors and from other authors—I’m thinking a lot about David Wojnarowicz, for example—for a rich mix,” she says. Wojnarowicz, a New Jersey-born artist and activist, died of Aids-related illnesses in 1992. “I hope we’ll realise a great app that will permit people to commemorate the loved,” Holzer stated.

Christopher Tepper and Paul Kelterborn – the New York City-based urban planners – are behind the memorial, which incorporates an 18ft-high canopy over granite paving. To date, Almost $5 million has been raised from local elected officials, foundations, corporations and individuals.

The monument is designed by the Brooklyn-based architecture practice Studio A+I, and will be the centrepiece of a new public park developed by the Manhattan-based company Rudin Management. The app will allow people to keep their memories alive far beyond the New York memorial.

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