gary hill

sorry, I don't think i posted it properly the first time..

From our readings I have decided to look at the video artist Gary Hill’s piece “Viewer” 1996, which involves 17 men (all homeless, living near Hill’s studio) doing little but standing in a line, facing forward. The non-matrix action of these 17 men, who stand still with no expression, makes the viewers attempts to enforce any supposed narrative on them redundant. By the end of the two minute piece we are forced to question who is the real participant within the piece, (the man in the line or the man watching the monitor in an art gallery) as boundaries between who is the viewer and who is viewed can no longer clearly be defined.
Stylistically within this piece we see the return to the low tech performance style of the 1970s. The line up, shot in one continuous take, in what looks like a dark studio is not a refined or polished product; whether this was Hill’s choice in order to create his effect, or merely determined by his budget. The anonymity of each of the 17 men works to question the idea of identity, and this sense of longing for identity is prevalent within many of the male video artist’s works of the 1990s.