Susan Hiller: Proposals and Demonstrations
Susan Hiller: Proposals and Demonstrations
20th October to 20th December 2008
Timothy Taylor Gallery, W1
'Ephemeral' is a word that crops up again and again when describing Susan Hiller's challenging, perhaps seductive work. Seemingly unimportant objects create a medium in which fixed meanings are rendered useless as the audience becomes implicated in a whole new perception of the items over time. Through sound, video, text, photography and drawing, there is a mining of everyday phenomena from our cultural surroundings - the ignored, overlooked, or rejected aspects of our shared cultural production. We are led on an investigation into the unconscious of our society, apparently invoking a world where the audience witnesses the contradictions in our collective cultural life.
At the centrepiece of Hiller's new exhibition is the frankly underwhelming 'From Here to Eternity', a collection of animated presentations based upon historical labyrinth patterns. By way of linking modernism to the occult, and spiritual practices to traditions of the past, it is hoped the viewer can achieve a meditative state of mind. Hiller observes: 'Meditative states of mind are universally available and valued, but our society is quite conflicted in many ways, and since 'spirituality' has been the property of organized religion mixed up with dogma and doctrine, a lot of people nowadays turn to exotic traditions'.
So society is to blame for this? Hiller believes that culture, and spirituality within that society is the problem, leading us to look to anthropology for the answers: 'I would say anthropology influenced me a lot, because I think people everywhere are both the beneficiaries and the victims of whatever cultural norms their particular society imposes. Ours makes it difficult to value contemplative states of mind or heightened states of awareness'. This is assuming one can actually achieve a contemplative state through a coloured ball working its way around different mazes on four different walls.
Naturally Hiller has no time for people who want art to provide instant gratification a la Saatchi: 'With any time-based work, a film, performance, concert etc, if the audience only dips in and out they really don't have a good idea of what's going on, so I don't worry about their perceptions or opinions very much'. But surely the audience wants art to be pleasing or challenging to the eye almost immediately, rather than wearing headphones for an age to get the point? Apparently not says Hiller, 'I guess I rely on people being actively interested enough to correlate themselves with the time of the work'. To that end, Hiller hopes that '...anyone interested or intrigued will come back to see the work from beginning to end...like 'Magic Lantern'', the work featuring the experimental recordings of the Latvian scientist, Konstantin Raudive, played on headphones while red, yellow and blue circles appear, disappear and blur together for 11 minutes.
God help us if this is where modern art is heading. Does Hiller honestly think that interactive, audio visual pieces are the way forward? 'Well, I tend to think that any art form is potentially interactive, because unless a viewer engages fully with it, it really doesn't achieve anything. A painting on a wall is just a bit of colour until someone spends some time looking at it.' Well, in my mind, art should be about communicating a vision, with talent on display to take the vision seriously.