Many of Susan Hiller’s works question the pre-eminence of our culturally-defined ‘rational’ understanding of the world. Since the early 1970s she has consistently worked to draw our attention to what is overlooked or out of sight in culture. In works that integrate ‘irrational’ or unscientific modes of thought, she develops strategies that bypass and subvert entrenched theoretical constructions that set limits on the intelligible.
Hiller is one of the pioneers of audio-visual art. Her new video installation, Resounding (Infrared), presents a cosmic soundscape with an unfolding panorama of visual patterns retrieved from the afterglow of the Big Bang. Earthly voices from our own era describe experiences of extra-terrestrial phenomena, and a sleeping human taps a message in Morse code: ‘I am dreaming, I am dreaming.’ Resounding (Infrared) opens up an area of instability, where fixed meanings are dissolved and where the audience is directly implicated in the emergence of different meanings which become visible only through the work and our experience of it.
Video:
Resounding (Infrared)
2013-2014
Video, color, sound
Duration : 30’
Courtesy of the artist.
To see and to hear the expanding radiations of the universe. This cosmic background radiation, which is present in the air around us, appeared as interference on pre-digital television sets and radios. Susan Hiller’s piece uses « audio translations of cosmic phenomenon alongside static and human voices to suggest certain relationships. »
Time: 4:30 am, 5:30 am, 6:30 am
Location: Ukrainian Institute of America / Library Room
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