Liliane Lijn - moonmeme

About

Moca’s director Michael Petry documented moonmeme in his Thames & Hudson book - The WORD is Art. Petry and Lijn both worked with Eric Prince, founder of ART[XR], to create this virtual version which will be shown for the first time at MOCA London in May 2025.

In this virtual reality version visitors will don a pair of special visors that will allow them to see the moon shining over a body of water. The experience is quite unnerving, and the virtual space seems immense. The moon looks so real you feel you can reach out and touch it.

Lijn's original concept in 1991 was to project the word SHE across the entire lunar surface as seen from Earth and allow the movements of Sun, Earth and Moon to alter the word and its meaning. Lijn developed moonmeme into a virtual work consisting of a computer program working in real time to project the word ‘SHE ’on to an image of the lunar surface. The image updates every 26 hours and 13 minutes, as the program tracks the real moon’s phase, and is accompanied by a soundtrack of Lijn chanting variations of ‘she ’and ancient lunar texts, in homage to cross-cultural beliefs that the moon is feminine. Over the course of a lunar month, as the moon moves through its different phases, the word 'SHE' becomes 'HE'and then re-emerges.

moonmeme presented as an installation or on a monitor has been widely exhibited and is available in an edition of 25 from Silvia Kouvali London/Piraeus. In this version, viewers are 'invited to type in their name and birthdate. On doing this, they see the lunar image with “SHE” or “HE” projected upon its surface, as it was at the time of their birth... From seeing oneself as a unique cosmic phenomenon, the self is viewed as a small part of a much larger pattern.'

Hamish Hamilton Penguin Random House have just released Liquid Reflections, Lijn's autobiography of her struggle to find her identity as an artist in Paris, New York and Athens from the 1958 to the late1960s, and it is available from https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/304870/liliane-lijn

Liliane Lijn's solo museum exhibition, previously at Haus der Kunst in Munich and mumok in Vienna, will tour to Tate St. Ives, opening on the 23rd of May.