REJOICE! OUR TIMES ARE INTOLERABLE.

an ebay seller photo of the cover of zg magazine no. 81v2, Future Dread, as it sits on a dinged up walnut stained tabletop. The magazine is actually a folded newsprint tabloid. ZG 81 are in white on black in the upper left corner, while no. 2, 75p, and future dread, the theme, are in white on the bottom. a mirrored image of a janus-faced nazi idol of some kind, a stern aryan profile of a a white man with full heil hitler lips, a sharp chin, and the bored out stare of a marble sculpture, is rendered as if in charcoal and outlined in red like it's the cover of time magazine instead.
An eBay seller’s image of ZG 81 No. 2, Future Dread

The theme of the second issue published in 1981 of Rosetta Brooks’ edgy British art & culture tabloid ZG, was “Future Dread.” Dan Graham wrote about the fascistic and authoritarian aspects of the spectacular media favored by artists of the Pictures Generation in an essay titled, “The End of Liberalism.” At the top of Jean Fisher’s profile of Jenny Holzer titled, “The Will to Act,” was a disclosure: that an uncredited text published as an advertisement in ZG‘s previous issue was “not, as some seem to have believed, a proclamation of an ultra-right or ultra-left organization, but was a text piece” of Holzer’s. [From her series, Inflammatory Essays (1979–82).]

This reveal was revealed to me by Alexander Bigman’s Pictures of the Past: Media, Memory, and the Specter of Fascism in Postmodern Art (2024, really, bookshop.org? backordered?) [where he cites ZG 3 & 4; I think they started over each year, and 1980 had two issues. While zine scholars sort that out, I’ll follow the cover and say it was 81-1, “Image Culture” and 81-2.] Anyway, Bigman’s citation also gives only the first and last lines of Holzer’s anonymous text: “REJOICE! OUR TIMES ARE INTOLERABLE…ONLY DIRE CIRCUMSTANCE CAN PRECIPITATE THE OVERTHROW OF OPPRESSORS” and “THE APOCALYPSE WILL BLOSSOM.” And reader, if it was just that I found Holzer’s essay, this post could’ve been a skeet.

But I found the Holzer on Lorde’s back.

In 2018 Lorde, the only female performer nominated for Album of the Year, was also the only nominee not invited to perform at what The New Yorker somehow called “The ‘Woke’ Grammys.” W Magazine correspondent Andrea Park was reporting from the red carpet:

Despite skipping the red carpet and opting [sic] not to perform during the ceremony, Lorde still stole the show at Sunday night’s 2018 Grammy Awards. The singer wore a stunning bright red Valentino dress with diamond cutouts in the bodice and a full-length skirt covered in fluffy bits of tulle, which she matched to her bold scarlet lipstick and red metal flask. What you might not have noticed, however, was the message hidden on the back of the gown.

In the middle of Lorde’s back, attached to her dress with coordinating red string, was a white card printed with the entirety of “Untitled (Rejoice!),” one of American artist Jenny Holzer’s Inflammatory Essays from the late 1970s.

a 2018 getty images photo by lester cohen of the small of lorde's back, made of red tulle, with a text by jenny holzer handwritten on a piece of paper, which is loosely whip stitched to the dress with red thread, published by w magazine
Jenny Holzer’s Untitled (Rejoice!), rewritten by Lorde and stitched onto the back of her Valentino dress after she got into it, photo Lester Cohen/Getty Images via W

Might you not have noticed it? Buried in the tulle? I’m looking at the Getty Images guy’s posed closeup of it, and I still can’t see it. It takes Park’s inclusion of a link to a wheatpaste poster at the Art Institute to figure out what the text says. Which is not at all the same thing as the message sent.

In ZG, Holzer used the form of advertising to put her anonymous text of rebellion in front of the readers of a tiny, British avant garde zine. In the next issue, once it had moved on, she claimed it as art “pulled from the written and spoken messages of the media.” In W, Lorde used the form of canonical Jenny Holzer art text to put images of her protest in front of consumers of celebrity-focused entertainment media. And in neither case does it matter at all what the content of the actual text says.

jenny holzer poster in Cerulean blue background with black text that reads,"REJOICE! OUR TIMES ARE INTOLERABLE. TAKE COURAGE FOR THE WORST IS A HARBINGER OF THE BEST. ONLY DIRE CIRCUMSTANCE CAN PRECIPITATE THE OVERTHROW OF OPPRESSORS. THE OLD AND CORRUPT MUST BE LAID TO WASTE BEFORE THE JUST CAN TRIUMPH. OPPOSITION IDENTIFIES AND ISOLATES THE ENEMY. CONFLICT OF INTEREST MUST BE SEEN FOR WHAT IT IS. DO NOT SUPPORT PALLIATIVE GESTURES; THEY CONFUSE THE PEOPLE AND DELAY THE INEVITABLE CONFRONTATION. DELAY THE INEVITABLE CONFRONTATION. DELAY IS NOT TOLERATED FOR IT JEOPARDIZES THE WELL-BEING OF THE MAJORITY. CONTRADICTION WILL BE HEIGHTENED. THE RECKONING WILL BE HASTENED BY THE STAGING OF SEED DISTURBANCES. THE APOCALYPSE WILL BLOSSOM." via artists space
Poster, 1982, from Eating Friends, Jenny Holzer and Peter Nadin’s Jan. 1982 show at Artists Space

In 1982, in between these two events, Holzer and her collaborator Peter Nadin exhibited these texts at Artists Space. Their stated project was to utilize “a variety of vehicles to distribute their work and…[place] it in contexts not normally associated with art…[thereby] attempting to undermine the traditional methods by which art is experienced.”

screenshot of a jan 27 2018 story in w magazine, whose logo w is in the upper left corner, next to the small text, "rejoice our times are intolerable" above the headline, in large serif face, lorde wore one of jenny holzer's inflammatory essay on the back of her grammys dress in protest, and below it, in quotes, "the old and corrupt must be laid to waste before the just can triumph."
Screenshot of the most successful exhibition of Jenny Holzer’s Inflammatory Essays ever, via W

IDEK what happened to Nadin, but Holzer’s spent all the time since then doing just this, putting her art into contexts like on pencils and t-shirts and condoms and sushi platters and Baccarat floor lamps. But none of that compares to having Lorde sew herself into a Holzer text for content, which, seven years on, still dominates the Google results for this specific text. And Lorde’s stunt itself is left behind by W Magazine, whose layout of Holzer’s text by an uncredited web designer, belongs in a museum. It even gets the core message of the text across. So far I have not found the artist popping up to claim credit for it.