Thuistezien 48 — 09.05.2020

24 hour interview
Gary Hill


Conducting a long conversation, as this 24 hour interview, is a light way of opening up the doors of perception. The artist Gary Hill is an extraordinary candidate for such an endeavor, since that is what he aims to achieve with his artworks as well. In his works Hill constructs and deconstructs speech, feed-backing what he has spoken by looping his video works and thereby returning to what he has spoken. By that method, video has become a medium for thinking to him.
Hill is a sculptor and conceptual artist who works with language and builds installations that play with the experience of the spectator to arrive at a still-point. To create such experiences he deconstructs the materiality and technology of video, light and sound, and aims to make the spectator aware of every little detail of the machine.

During the 24 hour long interview Hill meets a new conversation partner every two hours, each having different backgrounds and questions. It is inherent to the concept of this interview format that topics will return, things being said will be rephrased and fed back into other conversations. Yet, Hill manages to meet every person anew, speaking with different tones and connotations about his work and ideas for new ones, thought processes and personal experiences.
With Gerard Hadders, Gary Hill talks about his approach to making. Usually beginning from a curiosity, as for example wondering about ‘what happens if you tie an image to every word that I speak?’ To explore those questions he uses materials that are typically close at hand, as in his studio or family members, friends or friends of friends. Later in this conversation Hill touches upon the self-referentiality of his writing and that it is often written from the experience of writing itself. Language and speech are main threads throughout Hill’s works, but during the conversation with Mickey Yang he proclaims that he does not think of language as a topic. Language to Hill is rather at the core of what a human being is.

Hill has years of experience with writing and speaking, being interviewed and conducting interviews himself. Back in 1975, he had a cable-casted tv show called ‘Woodstock Tonight’, five days of the week late at night they would talk with different guests. During his conversation with Baruch Gottlieb he talks about the differences between our current mass media and live tv in the 70’s, when they were unable to know if anyone was watching. Hill consequently arrives at the question: ‘What's the difference between 10 people and a million people watching?’

The interview '24 hours with Gary Hill' was produced and filmed by the West Hague team as part of the ‘Gary Hill: Allways Rings Twice’ exhibition in the spring of 2018.

20:00 — 22:00
Arjon Dunnewind, director media art festival Impakt Utrecht
22:00 — 24:00
Gerard Hadders, graphic designer Rotterdam
24:00 — 02:00
Sandra Smets, art critic Rotterdam
02:00 — 04:00
Gerald van der Kaap, film maker Amsterdam
04:00 — 06:00
Jacinto Lageira, professor and art critic Paris
06:00 — 08:00
Johann Nowak, director DNA gallery Berlin
08:00 — 10:00
Mickey Yang, visual artist The Hague
10:00 — 12:00
Gert Hoogeveen, technician Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
12:00 — 14:00
Willem van Weelden, researcher and writer Amsterdam
14:00 — 16:00
Benjamin Weil, director museum Centro Botin, Santander
16:00 — 18:00
Baruch Gottlieb, artist and curator, Berlijn
18:00 — 20:00
Noor Mertens, curator Kunstverein Langenhagen