What is secrecy today? Jenny Holzer, security controversies, and the art of mass redaction

Abstract Jenny Holzer makes political art out of thousands of declassified and often highly redacted government documents generated by legal and political struggles over the US-led war on terror. This article makes three arguments about Holzer’s declassified art. First, Holzer has been largely overlooked by security studies despite growing scholarly interest in art and security. The article calls for security studies to engage with her practice. Second, Holzer’s screenprints and paintings of declassified materials provide an opportunity and a resource to denaturalize the redacted document, and interrogate the symbolic and epistemic work it performs in making security controversies public. Building on Holzer, I develop the idea of “mass redaction” and argue this practice is not a constant feature of the history of official secrecy but a rather recent invention. By historicizing mass redaction we can better understand state secrecy as something made out of multiple, changing practices and better grasp what is secrecy today. Third, I use Holzer’s work to challenge the presumption that the declassification of information about violent and controversial military activities is tantamount to openness and visibility. Declassification is no guarantee of publicity. Instead, a host of additional mediators, such as artists, journalists, campaigners and researchers, are also necessary for the declassified to generate a public.