Susan Hiller (1940–2019) was an US born artist, based in UK. She worked with installation, video, photography, painting, sound, sculpture, performance, artist’s books and writing, being one of the first interdiclipinary multimedia artists. Her body of work is defined by the blurred border of rational and irrational and shaped by the subconscious, the supernatural and the surreal. She was influenced by minimalism, feminisim, anthropology and Fluxus, inter alia. Her subject matters were often marginalised and regarded non-noble, even controversial at the time, like pregnancy, dreams and near death experiences. Her materials were mundane like postcards, wallpapers and signs. Hiller often reshaped her previous artworks by disassembling them and using the residue to a new piece of art.
The artwork discussed is Channels (2013), where different, mostly found monitors are composed as a wall, running material like blue screen and sound waves, familiar from hospitals or ideas of them. The soundscape varies from people describing their near to death experiences to a group of people and soundscape turning into a choir of indistinct mumble.
The artwork lingers interestingly between video and light art; it’s not really figurative, but not pure light either. The classification oscillates during the loop, and keeps reminding that an artwork can be both.
EDUCATION
BA Art studies in Smith College, NY
PhD Anthropology in Tulane University, Louisiana