‌‌How does language as a tool of authority and power
affect the perception of truth in the post-truth era?

With Jenny Holzer and Dread Scott 
‌

Abstract

This paper aims to research some contemporary artistic and political practice with the concept of ‘the distortion of perception through language.’ In order to contextualize this thesis, this paper reviews the relation between post-truth and authoritative language, also, lists language methods in partisan media and fake news. This paper explores two conceptual artists, who adopt the language methodology, to find proper examples; Jenny Holzer and Dread Scott. By putting forward the selected declarations, Holzer presents the change of perception, such as belief and the reinforce of ideology. In addition, Scott suggests a photomontage with writing a question and puts a book that can write answers and U.S flag on the floor, then interrogates freedom of speech and expression through the censorship, a method of language distortion.  By looking at the socio-political viewpoint and two artists, the paper intends to present that the language can affect thoughts and interpretation about an event, situation and its truth.  Also, through the methodologies in contemporary art, the paper looks at how they make a public discourse.  As a whole, it explores the character of language and impact on perception.
 

Keywords: language, post-truth, authority, perception, distortion.


Language has been a crucial role to express and share thoughts and concepts in various methodologies of contemporary art because it has each cognitive meaning that could share and imply narratives.  This characteristic has been more highlighted in the post-truth era that has been increased the numbers of media and social media platform rapidly.  In other words, language is an influential way to shape public opinions by being controlled itself and its contents in media.  This means the language could make the public cognitive distortion about the perception of the truth.  This essay will first discuss the property of the language in socio-political view and then look at two examples of how contemporary fine artists explored it in their works.  The final part of the paper will summarize the relationship between perception and language and demonstrate the crucial role of language today.

The contemporary era is regarded mainly as the post-truth which the Oxford Dictionaries define as relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public than appeals to emotion and personal belief.  This is caused by not only thinking areas such as cognitive bias, but also partisan media and fake news.  According to Lee (2018, p. 65), the awareness of news has started to change with the appearance of CBS news show "60 Minutes" in 1968.  Until before that show, the news was regarded that it does not need to profit.  However, as that show became the first news show in history to turn a profit, 'although it did not change the model or expectations for TV news immediately, network executives began to see that news could be profitable.' (Ibid)  After, with emerging various news shows, TV networks became fiercely competed.  Thus, they have used partisan news reports to survive the competition.  As a result, using this points, the so-called power elite of the government, businesses and politicians tried to lead public opinion to their advantage, and to this end, they did not hesitate to select the information that was favourable to them and provide information that was unfavourable to them.  Sometimes he manipulated the information itself.  As partisan media and fake news became more revealing, both voice and text languages were read as its methodologies.  The language has the strong power to convey the message and the opinion of issues, by having both intrinsic and behind contents.  In accordance with who writes to, who controls the language, which exerts the language and how to choose the language as emphasised in the content of the event, language maybe make human thinking such as the direction and perception of the truth change.  Namely, the language in the media is a tool of authority and power.  This is shaped as methods such as censorship, cover-up, euphemism and frameworks etc.  Such language forms could be a political propaganda technique.  Edward Bernays refers that 'the military can control public opinion by propaganda as if it were controlling the bodies of soldiers.' (Park, 2017, p. 6)  These discover are not simply limited to the present.  Robertson and McDaniel (2005, p. 307) note, as postmodern and post-structuralism such as Michel Foucault point out about controlling the language and obtaining the authority and power to speak publicly, the study of the authoritative language has continued to be dealt with in contemporary art‌.

A leading artist in whose work I can see examples in the relationship between contradictory information and perception based on authoritative language is Jenny Holzer.  Born in Gallipolis, Ohio, in 1950, as she is a representative artist who works on text, from the late 1970s to the present, she has communicated with the public through text that captures social issues or universal life issues.  Among the early works of her, Inflammatory Essays (1979-82) is each consist of 31 paragraphs with different contents and forms. The texts are provocative, and their subjects range from the scientific to the political and interpersonal.  The tone of the work takes a more aggressive and inflammatory method of investigating declarations, but she expressed omitting the subject so that the speaker's identity is unknown. According to Siegel (1986) 's interview with her, she states this work as 'from one Essay to another, they display a spectrum of views, from far-left to far-right.'  She takes a methodology not to reveal the speaker of the declaration from this work.  Since the original announcement is based on the reader's perception of the speaker's identity, the perspective and purpose of the article become blurred if the identity of the speaker is not revealed.  Moreover, the speaker's voice, which appears differently from paragraph to paragraph printed on different pages in the work, causes the writing to lose its centripetal point and orientation.  The Art Critic Joselit (1998, p. 45) named it the "method of evaporation of the subject," referring to the way the subject is omitted or the identity of the speaker is unknown by presenting statements from various perspectives at the same time as above.  Also, she mentioned that she intended to show declarations that are shaped slogans such as graffiti forms on the walls of the city.  The reason is :

'From the beginning, my work has been designed to be stumbled across in the course of a person's daily life.  I think it has the most impact when someone is just walking along, not thinking about anything in particular, and then finds these unusual statements either on a poster or in a sign.' (Siegel, 1986)

‌In other words, this means declarations can create or transform public perceptions.  These missing declarations gradually became more various enough to fill the 10' ' 25' walls by her.  And, these suggest how the unexposed speaker changes our perception by filling massive walls.  In the process of reading this, we unconsciously believe it or question it.  By not revealing the speaker, it can be seen that her way of working shows the fiction of ideology.  The given neutral and authoritative information implies a contradictory and unreliable situation due to the deletion of the speaker.  In this point, the language applies as a tool of authority and power and makes ambiguous information that can make people change perception.  The audience can realise that the declaration of this ambiguous argument also reflected that language strengthens social ideology and distorts individual beliefs.  As a result, in her work, language has the power to imply meaning and at the same time, becomes self-reliant in which, an inaccurate language that distorts an individual's perception and beliefs (somewhat blurred or modified) can distort even the perception of truth and obscure the essence.  This perspective has similar things to my research question.  She effectively presented her concept through a form of declarative slogan format such as the poster.  By submitting a literal form away from objects and images inside expensive art galleries that can only be owned by economically leisurely people, the influence has grown even more significant.  As she expressed the impact of language, official languages, and the contradictory information, it can be connected to artworks based on next paragraph censorship.

‌Another artist who approached authoritative language in the installation is Dread Scott.  He was born in 1965, in Chicago, Illinois.  In 1989, the work, which was presented at a student exhibition at School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he attended, created a sensation. The title of 'what is the proper way to display a U.S. flag?' (1988) consists of a photograph, book and U.S. flag.  A photomontage that had a text that read, 'what is the proper way to display a U.S. flag?' puts on the wall.   Below that are books that people could write responses to that question in.  And he unfolded the U.S. flag on the floor of the gallery.  Then he created a situation in which the audience would step on the flag if they wanted to get close to read and write the text.  To be specific, in a photomontage with images of flag-draped coffins coming back from Vietnam, South Korean are burning flags and raising signs that read "Yankee go home son of a bitch."  And, the question is written on top of the page.  According to Scott (2018), 'what is the proper way to display a U.S. flag?' is a conceptual work that encouraged audience participation.  In an interview with Rasheed about the meaning behind his work, he (2016) states, "this is a world where a tiny handful controls the great wealth and knowledge that humanity as a whole has created."  He could aim to refer to Reagan's tax reform.  It is, which gave the wealthy a small tax burden while raising the gap between the rich and the poor.  Namely, he was interested in economic, political and social inequality.  Later, its response spread to protests starting with U.S. President Bush (he mentioned 'disgraceful' to the installation) and Vietnamese veterans, while the civic group tried flag-burning protests.  The media made a critical public opinion about the situation.  "What is the proper way to raise the American flag?" the book was filled with hundreds of pages of answers from thousands of participants. Audience wrote long and short answers.  And there are a lot of different languages. These reactions ranged from respect and support to hatred and opposition.‌

‌"I am a German girl. If we Germans would admire our flag as you all do, we should be called Nazis again. I think you do have too much trouble with this flag."
"I think that the artist should be returned to his heritage, i.e., the jungles of Africa, and then he can shovel mature in his artistic way."
"As a veteran defencing the flag, I personally would never defend your stupid ass! You should be shot!" (Scott, 2018)

‌His work dealt with the event of compulsory patriotism.  This means the queries of liberty of speech in regards to flag burning or any desecration of valuable symbolic objects.  Therefore, he made various attitude and responses to the audience and drew out his work's success by creating a public discourse on patriotism and American values.  He shows political and social problems, as he extends his work to a kind of social reverberation beyond art.  In other words, he puts forward questions about freedom in speech, the censorship due to authoritative language, so that shows the controversy, tremendously and social changes that the audience made and occurred.  Like Holzer, it can make perception and distortion by creating an issue.  These points are linked to my research question.
‌
‌This essay has demonstrated how the language acts on as a tool of authority and power and affects the cognitive distortion; in this case, through two artists from different approach methods. Holzer observed that the authoritative speech and text could change the perception, and language could make distortion by not revealing the speaker, and also Scott created a forum of socio-political discourse by using the censor characteristic of the language. They actively introduced the language into their works and interrogated the language elements of the post-truth in their socio-political perspective. This means that language, especially including text, takes an influence into thoughts and interpretation about an issue and its truth. The language exists and can be changed but continuously maintained for people's communication. It can have authority and power in accordance who speeches and controls. Thus, it has helped leave a stronger impression on socio-political issues in the audience in contemporary art. These works prove that. The so-called power elite and the media would continue to use the form of language according to their taste. In this age of lies and speculation, awareness and understanding of language make the audience think critically. (1934 words)



Reference
 
Figure 1 (1979-82) Inflammatory Essays. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/holzer-inflammatory-essays-65434 (Accessed: 18 May 2020)
 
Figure 2 (2018) Inflammatory Essays (Installation View). Available at:
http://www.scottyh.com/media/c6cade9143c047e4815497d73768c933inflammatory-essays-by-jenny-holzer (Accessed: 18 May 2020)
Figure 3 (1988) what is the proper way to display a U.S. flag? Available at: https://www.dreadscott.net/portfolio_page/what-is-the-proper-way-to-display-a-us-flag/
Figure 4 (1988) what is the proper way to display a U.S. flag? (Part of Installation) Ibid
Figure 5 Ibid
Figure 6 (1989) Chicago of Sun-Times. Ibid

Joselit, D. (1998) Voices, Bodies and Spaces: The Art of Jenny Holzer. London: Phaidon Press.
Lee, C. M. (2018) Post-truth. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press.
Park, C. (2017) Distortion of the press: Hidden meanings and methods. Seoul: Communication Books.
Rasheed, K. (2011) Liberator Magazine. Available at: http://weblog.liberatormagazine.com/2011/06/dread-scott-make-revolutionary-art- to.html (Accessed: 12 May 2020)
Robertson, J. and McDaniel, C. (2005) Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art after 1980. New York: Oxford University Press.
Scott, D.(2018) How art can shape America’s conversation about freedom [TED]. 4 April. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/dread_scott_how_art_can_shape_america_s_conversation_about_freedom?language=en
(Accessed: 10 May 2020)
Tate. (1986)  Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions. London: The Tate Gallery. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/holzer-no-title-p77390 (Accessed: 12 May 2020)



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