CONJUNCTIONS: A Web Exclusive
Gary Hill
Adaptation in collaboration with George Quasha
Seven-channel video/sound installation
An entry way dimly lit leads the viewer around a corner to a completely white room lit extremely bright (more than 10,000 watts and enough the make the eyes ache when confronted with the change in light). A slightly elevated veranda with right angled chairs (not easy chairs) suggests the viewer be seated and alert. From here one sees at a distance a fragmented line of glass objects (TVs), the cathode ray tubes having been removed from their electronic housing. The glass objects ("jars") sit on a low plateau pedestal measuring 360 x 60 x 18 h. inches. The side walls and the wall behind the monitors, as well as the floor, are painted white to reflect still more light. The light is "keyed" from the monitors to minimize glare.
DISTURBANCE is a multi-lingual adaptation of selected gnostic texts unearthed in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Due to the fact of being buried for centuries, perhaps to save them from destruction by what became the orthodox Christian church, many of the texts are damaged and are therefore quiet fragmentary. Literally and figuratively, the texts are reconstructed and deconstructed to be seen and heard ("he who has ears to hear let him hear"). Two characteristics, that of multiple voices/points of view and the present physical condition of the texts, their fragmented character, are central to the content and structure of the installation. The nature of the "adaptation" arranges the texts to bring forth the possibility for the viewer to experience a multiplicity of meanings within a structural resonance that provides an open field. Texts are heard spoken by a number of voices in several languages. Each person, ranging from actor to the "person off the street," to poets and writers, bring their own particular nuance, meaning and spoken tongue(s) to the text. This further opens that interpretation and emphasizes the "gnostic" concept of creative energy and spiritual quest being something personal. For example, the sound poet Bernard Heidsieck, created sound text from The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit. The philosopher, Jacques Derrida, wove together lines and phrases from the Gospel of Thomas as he is seen full figured pacing through the "sentence" in intense white light. Other participants include the French poets Claude Royet-Journoud, Joseph Guglielmi, Jacqueline Cahen, who are seen as interrupts to the overall fabric and its unraveling. Another poet, Pierre Joris, combined English, French and Dutch to deliver the portions of the Trimorphic Protennoia while improvising with the brackets of empty space (missing words).
The structure of DISTURBANCE is based around the metaphor of fragmentation, more specifically, that of a broken or interrupted sentence. This "reading" is further enforced (and brought to question) by the illusion of continuous images or panoramas which at times stretch across all seven monitors. Rather than actually being continuous, these images exist via horizontal movement of a single camera with its recorded image being seen slightly delayed on each succeeding screen. These "time ripples" can only form panoramas with steadily moving images. Any aberration within the initial horizontal movement/recording ripples through the screens thus collapsing the spatial illusion (when a horizontal camera movement comes to rest, the panorama collapses into a multiple of the arrested image). As a substructure, the monitors' individual relative positions allow for intratextual spaces to develop between them. Monitors 1 and 2 are positioned as an opened book, functioning as mirrors, dyads, doubles and the book itself. When not linked to the continuous "sentence" by an extended panorama, monitors 3, 4 and 5 can be seen as a triad (trinity) and literally provide the possibility of the most continuous unbroken image. Monitor 6 is positioned as if it were broken off the triad (the broken image; the broken word); the viewer closes the break - the quad becomes present. Monitor 7 is used as the monad, point of view or source.
Special Note by Gary Hill: Although part of the official credits for Disturbance read ".adaptation in collaboration with George Quasha," this does not say enough about his contribution to this work. There are no really categories for the kind of collaboration, which took place during the initial development of the work. This perhaps underlines the special nature of true collaboration that is so difficult to pinpoint. 12 years later I would like to take the opportunity of this performance/collaboration publication that centers on these aspects of my work to state my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation for the intense time shared working with George and with the texts that he convinced me were relevant to my work. Also, without his intimate connection and patient working with the French poets who performed in Disturbance, this work could not have happened in the way it did. The contributions of Anne Angelini and Timothy Miller similarly contributed to the specific process of its creation.
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