Video rhetoric.

Art of Limina: Gary Hill

Slought Foundation

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

March 21-May 1, 2009

S. Brent Plate's essay "Between Cinema and a Hard Place: Gary Hill's Video Art Between Words and Images" begins by questioning the nature of video art and its relationship to the contemporary art world. For a critical essay written in 2003. this seems irrelevant. One only has to look at the large number of video installations in New York City's Chelsea district on any given month, any major Biennale or art fair, or the many international film and video festivals, to see that video has an established place in the commercial art market and has for over a decade. The comparison to cinema is also an outdated and somewhat superficial argument, since video has evolved with its own syntax and structure over the past thirty years.

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Plate also states that in order to understand Hill's work, one must have an understanding of philosophy and linguistics, as if to suggest that other contemporary artists do not also reference literary and philosophical texts as source material. Two recent examples come to mind--Shirin Neshat's video work from 2008, which is based on Shahrnush Parsipur's novel Women Without Men (1974) and Joshua Mosley's video animation dread (2007), which is based on the writings of philosophers Blaise Pascal and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. (2)

While it is helpful to understand Gary Hill's influences and source material, one does not require a degree in linguistics to access Hill's rich and powerful work. Recently on exhibit at the Slought Foundation were ten seminal pieces by Hill, who has been creating work since 1973, shortly after video's inception.

The exhibition featured two new works--Up Against Down (2008) and Figuring Grounds (2008). Returning to the body as a site for investigation, Hill's six-channel looped video installation Up Against Down (making its United Stales premiere) spanned two rooms of the gallery. Larger than life, Hill's fragmented body parts quiver relentlessly against an unseen force as amplified droning reverberates throughout the gallery. Veins protruding from the neck, hands, and legs accentuate the tension. The hidden source of tension suggests a personal struggle (perhaps against the body's mortality, or against an unknown enemy), creating hyper-awareness of both the body's fragility, and its ability to resist, despite all obstacles.

Making its world premiere, the single-channel video Figuring Grounds (5:30, U-matic video) is the result of a collaborative project with poets George Quasha and Charles Stein, recorded at the Stained Glass Studio in Barrytown, New York. Quasha and Stein respond to each other's changing video image with guttural sounds. Resembling a primal form of speech, the sounds increase in pitch, tempo, and volume as the two men communicate in their private language.

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Also on exhibit were a series of rarely seen works from the 1980s including Around & About (1980, 4:45, U-matic video) and Site Recite (a prologue) (1989, 4:00, U-matic video). In Around & About. Hill edited a single frame for each spoken syllable of text. A daunting task even in the digital age, it is difficult to imagine how time consuming and challenging it was to edit frame by frame with analogue U-matic machines. Written by Hill, the monologue alludes to the break-up of a personal relationship. The juxtaposition between the confidential nature of the text and the banal images of an office interior creates a paradoxical relationship with the viewer--one of both intimacy and detachment.

Reflecting on memory, perception, and how "we see," Site Recite presents an elusive visual landscape. As Hill's camera pans throughout the scene, objects come in and out of focus--a bird's skull, a piece of bark--all relics of the natural world insinuating a moving, vanitas, still life painting.

Other works on display included Wall Piece (2000) a single-channel, looped, projected video installation of a man repeatedly throwing himself against a wall, expelling a single word upon impact; Happenstance (1982-83, 6:30) where text transforms into mutable, abstract, moving forms; Big Legs Don't Cry (2005, video animation); Goats & Sheep (1995/2002, 11:00, video); Why Do Things Get in a Muddle? (Come on Petunia) (1984, 2-inch reel-to-reel, 32:00); and Incidence of Catastrophe (1987-88, single-channel video, 43:51); inspired by the 1941 novel Thomas the Obscure by Maurice Blanchot.

While each of Hill's works has a unique visual and conceptual aesthetic, one of the common threads throughout the exhibit and Hill's oeuvre is language--language as written text, language as spoken word, language as communication, language as subject/object. In 1980, Hill coined the term, "Electronic Linguistics" to describe his work. The current work involves image-text syntax, a kind of electronic linguistics, utilizing the dialogue to manipulate a conceptual space that locates mental points of intersection, where text forms and feeds back into the imaging of those intersects. (4)

Another frequent theme in Hill's work is the exploratory and experimental aspects of the camerawork and editing. The ever-shifting point of view alters viewers' perception, forcing them to question and/or discern their own understanding of the image. Many of the videos expressed the inability or hindrance of language as a means of communication. Hill amplifies this frustration through techniques such as the strobe and low-frequency sounds to create physical discomfort in the viewers.

Upon further reflection, there is one aspect of Plate's quote that rings true. He states that Gary Hill's videos do not sit easily within an art-historical perspective. I would suggest that this uneasy resting place is the in-between space of liminality. The exhibition title "Art of Limina" signifies the point of sensory threshold--"near the edge or breaking point." (5) It is this unsettling locus where Hill pushes both himself and the viewer--and altogether we arc never comfortable, but dare not look away.

COLETTE COPELAND is a multimedia artist who teaches critical writing about contemporary art and culture at the University of Pennsylvania.

NOTES (1.) S. Brent Plate, "Between Cinema and a Hard Place Gary Hill's Video Art Between Words and Images," Critical Essay (Winter 2003); available at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2220/is_I_45/ai_105967793 (3/20/09). "Between Cinema & a Hard Place" was also the title of a Gary Hill video installation from 1991. (2.) Shirin Neshat's video installation exhibition was on display at Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York January 19-February 23, 2008; see www.gladstonegallery.com/neshat.asp. Josh Mosley's dread was featured in the 2007 Venice Biennale and at the ICA in Philadelphia January 16-March 29, 2009; see www.icaphila.org/exhibitions/mosley.php. (3.) George Quasha and Charles Stein, Introduction to Electronic Linguistics, Art of Limina (Barcelona: Ediciones Poligrafa, 2009). 65.5. Ibid., 47.

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