Gary Hill Incidence of Catastrophe 1987-88 Single-channel HD video 43:51 minutes
ABOUT THE ARTIST Inspired by the novel “Thomas the Obscure” by Maurice Blanchot wherein the protagonist of the novel is the reader of the novel he is in (who may well be Blanchot himself). In the video, Thomas the protagonist is played by Hill, which confounds the self-reflexive nature of the book’s relationships all the more, making the video something of a “transcreation.” The “reader” begins in the liquidity of the text almost as if he were waking from drowning. Images of the sea ravishing the shore – small cliffs of sand eroding and collapsing – are intercut with extreme close-ups of text and the texture of the page and book itself being flooded with ocean waves. In scene after scene the reader attempts to re-enter the book only to find himself a part of intense dreams and hallucinations. Thomas/Hill reads the book, when suddenly he feels he is being watched by the words. The character then experiences the book as a forest of words he is fighting through. Another “chapter” finds him alone in his room at night, overcome by a strange illness, in which the vision of the text has him vomiting violently. The text infiltrates the reader’s entire experience. Thinking he is still capable of functioning socially, the character finds himself at dinner with a group of hotel guests. Their conversation turns into isolated words that, like the sand, erode and wash away with seemingly all possibilities of meaning. The final scene shows the reader in the form of Hill physically and mentally destroyed. Cowering naked in the fetal position, he lies in his own excrement on a white-tiled floor, babbling unintelligible sounds. The pages of the book have grown into monumental walls with colossal letters that menacingly surround and imprison the naked body.
ABOUT THE GALLERY DNA – Die Neue Aktionsgalerie was founded in 2001 by its Managing DNA Galerie Director Johann Nowak, and is since then located in Berlin Mitte. The gallery is Augustraße 20 dedicated to promoting contemporary art, concentrating especially on 10117 Berlin international artists residing in Berlin. GERMANY DNA’s objective is to provide a stage for contemporary art and stimulate the debate that surrounds it, for example through the organization of panel Contact: discussions and artist talks. Applying this approach, a variety of projects, such Johann Nowak / Director as the panel discussion “The dilemma of collecting art in times of dematerializazion” in the Goetht-Institut Berlin, have been realized. This discussion was part of the official art forum Berlin in 2008. This event T: +49 30 28 59 96 52 coincided temporally with the opening-performance of the exhibition E: [email protected] “Punishment” by Japanese artist Tatsumi Orimoto. W: www.dna-galerie.de DNA Gallery and its Managing Director Johann Nowak aim to present and foster new horizons in art, which in return require experimental forms of exhibiting, conveying, and communicating. The program accommodates a wide range of artistic media with focuses on video, performance, and installation art, besides painting, sculpture, and photography. The works are presented via innovative, interactive, interdisciplinary, and multimedia projects.
The gallery has an international character, collaborating regularly with numerous galleries and institutions outside Germany. Moreover, DNA participated in the following international art fairs, including ARCO Madrid, ART COLOGNE, Sh Contemporary (Shanghai), dc duesseldorf contemporary, FIAC (Paris), LOOP (Barcelona), MACO – méxico arte contemporáneo, and Art Hongkong.