GARY HILL, Viewer, 1996
Five-channel video installation
Five video projectors, five-channel synchronizer, five DVD players and five DVDs
Edition of two and one artist's proof
INSTALLATION: Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark, 1999.
PHOTO: Thomas and Poul Pederson
COURTESY DONALD YOUNG GALLERY, CHICAGO

In Viewer, Hill’s projection creates a paradoxical opening up to the viewer’s ‘performance,’ as the ‘real time’ of viewing becomes the measure of Viewer’s operation, even as these images emphasize their removal in recording and representation.

In their documentation of Viewer, George Quasha and Charles Stein recall that:

"When we came into the room what we happened upon was the view. A room with a view, inside. The view is people looking out from where they are, in to where we are, here, in the middle of the space. It seems, perplexingly, that the view itself is viewing - viewing us (…) In an environment that is saturated with viewing, at a certain point it’s as though the space itself views - a topological displacement of agency" (original emphasis, Quasha & Stein 2001: 18)

It is a displacement of ‘agency’ amplified in the implicit exchange of view between the recorded (past) and the live (present).

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Connect to:

• ghosting
• replay

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References

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