GARY HILL

Table and chairs, four speakers, notebooks with printed texts, magnifying glasses

Dimensions variable

Edition of five and one artist’s proof

Description included in Panorama 5:  “jamais vu.” Tourcoing:  Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains, 2004, pp. 56 – 57:

This work is a long circuitous story that still unfolds as I type this.  The artist, Joachim Montessuis, requested a sound work from me for a CD compilation series entitled Erratum consisting of 'noise, art and poetry.'  After several email exchanges over a period of a few years there was a flash point (perhaps when Joachim needed a title for administrative purposes) when the raison d’etre of the work became apparent – our correspondence had become the work.  With so much thought, negotiation and maneuvering around the space of potential sound, its contextualization and its name, length and further descriptions that were to be forthcoming, it became the absence of sound that grew to embody the process of thinking about a sound work.  The title, A Rat in the Tomb, is a play on the word erratum as well as our many email x-changes.  The (second glimpse) is an installation version wherein Joachim’s voice is heard on loudspeakers saying his emails chronologically and my correspondence is reproduced on paper with extremely small typeface accompanied by magnifying glasses.  (Gary Hill)