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Susan
Hiller |
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Untitled
1999
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"Susan
Hiller works with objects and knowledges relegated to the periphery
of discourse, whether they be popular or art historical... In individual
works and installations, Hiller focuses on subjects that have been
repressed by contemporary, materialist lay society - the occult,
the so-called freaks, the parnormal, religion, and the collective
unconscious... Hiller's 'untitled' piece engages with Freud's notion
of the uncanny. It is a work formed on the back of a group of historically
and culturally specific objects, individually packaged and labelled,
sitting ambiguously and hermetically, poised in transit from one
context to another. The soundtrack, which is exotic and old, engages
the space around the piece, and makes it seem holy. The object appears
displaced, other, and not of this moment." Note: I found the wrapped items in the muddy gutter of a street in London's East End a few years ago, apparently discarded during demolition of a building that once housed a tiny shop-front synagogue. Three of the items are remnants of ritual objects (bima curtain, torah cover, etc); the fourth is a large ledger from the synagogue's now-defunct burial society into which I've inserted an old monograph about the numerous 'small synagogues that once served London's Jewish immigrant community. All the parcels are labelled and described in a museological style. A fifth parcel (not shown) contains a cd player which, at intervals, ritualistically sings a fragment of the morning prayer thanking God for restoring the soul. By analogy, the truthfulness of my labeling of the wrapped parcels, and their significance, has to be taken on faith, because what's inside isn't visible.
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