Equal Time, 1979
Video (color, stereo sound); 4:00 min.
In this work, the field of Hill’s experimentation is the synchronization of visual and linguistic elements. For Equal Time, he sets up a minimalist arrangement, whereby two identical panels with grid patterns, starting respectively on the left and right side of the monitor, slowly move across the screen against a black background to the opposite side. As the panels overlap they produce moiré patterns. Each is associated with the voice of a different speaker, whose voices emerge from the left or right stereo channel. As soon as the panels completely overlap, the words of the two texts merge and the two voices, now in unison, produce a phasing sound similar to the visual moiré pattern of the panels. As the panels continue to move the voices have changed places and each one is now reciting the other’s text from ‘the room opposite.’ The panels continue across the screen disappearing as the voices end their respective texts. Hill also uses the element of speaking going in and out of synchronization in a later work, House of Cards, 1993.
Broeker, Holger, ed. Gary Hill: Selected Works and catalogue raisonné. Wolfsburg: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2002, GHCR 34, pp. 81.
“Video Viewpoints: Processual Video,” Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, February 26, 1980.
Image Dissector Screening Series, University of California, Los Angeles, California, June 10, 1980.
Solo exhibition. Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, February 19 – 24, 1981.
Solo screening. Anthology Film Archives, New York, New York, February 28, 1981.
Solo screening. Boston Film/Video Foundation, Boston, Massachusetts, March 24, 1983.
Solo screening. London Video Arts, London, England, December 8, 1983.
Solo screening. International Cultural Center, Antwerp, Belgium, December 9, 1983.
Solo exhibition. Center for Media Art, The American Center, Paris, France, December 13 – 15, 1983.
Solo exhibition. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, May 24 – June 15, 1986.
7. Berner Poesietage, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland, April 4 – 12, 1987.
2e Semaine Internationale de Vidéo, Saint-Gervais Genève, Geneva, Switzerland, November 16 – 21, 1987.
Vidéoformes 89: Festival de la Création Vidéo, Clermont-Ferrand, France, April 20 – 29, 1989.
ForumBHZvideo, Festival Internacional de Video, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, November 10 – 15, 1993.
"Gary Hill: Selected Videotapes 1978 – 1990,” Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, June 7 – August 28, 1994.
“Gary Hill: O lugar do outro/where the other takes place,” Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 1 – 6, 1997 (not the full run of the exhibition); Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, October 3 – November 2, 1997.
Solo exhibition. Center for Contemporary Images, Saint-Gervais Genève, Geneva, Switzerland, September 9, 10, 1998.
“Gary Hill: Video Works,” NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo, Japan, February 16 – March 31, 1999.
“Rewind to the Future,” Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany, December 1, 1999 – February 13, 2000.
Solo exhibition. Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina, May 17 – June 4, 2000 (May 25, 2000 screening).
Solo exhibition. Museo Caraffa, Córdoba, Argentina, July 7 – 30, 2000 (July 8, 2000 screening).
“Hill(scape),” Extra Microwave Media Art Festival (organized by Videotage), Hong Kong Space Museum Lecture Hall, Hong Kong, January 14 – 31, 2001 (January 19 screening).
“l’écriture vidéophage – les bandes vidéo de Gary Hill.” La Compagnie, Marseille, France, May 1 – 31, 2001 (May 1 and 3 screenings).
“Gary Hill: Selected Works 1976 – 2003,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan, May 2 – August 24, 2003.
“Videographies – The Early Decades,” EMST (The National Museum of Contemporary Art), Athens, Greece, July 13 – December 31, 2005.
Seoul International NewMedia Festival, Seoul, Korea, August 4 – 14, 2011.
Hill, Gary. "Processual Video." Video Viewpoints. New York: Museum of Modern Art, February 1980, unpaginated.
Hill, Gary. "Exhibition: Gary Hill: Opening of War Zone – A Video Installation and Presentation of New Videotapes." Media Study/Buffalo (January/May 1980), p. 10.
Oeuvres vidéo de Gary Hill en sa présence. Center for Media Art. Program notes. Paris: American Center, 1983, unpaginated.
Lee, Thomas. "March Screening Series at BF/VF." Visions Magazine (March 1983), p. 13.
Hanhardt, John G. Gary Hill. The New American Filmmakers Series 30. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1986, unpaginated.
2e Semaine International de Video. Geneva: Saint-Gervais Genève, 1987, pp. 63, 126.
Solo screening. Espace lyonnais d’art contemporain (ELAC), Lyon, France, July 26 & September 27, 1988.
Vidéoformes '89: Festival de la Création Vidéo. Clermont-Ferrand, France: Festival de la Création Vidéo, 1989, p. 12.
Sarrazin, Stephen. Chimaera Monographe No. 10 (Gary Hill). Montbéliard, France: Centre International de Création Vidéo Montbéliard, Belfort, 1992, pp. 24, 39, 76. (Including an excerpt from an interview with Gary Hill).
ForumBHZvideo 1993. Festival Internacional de Vídeo: Limite. Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Festival Internacional de Video, 1993, p. 48.
Thériault, Michèle. Gary Hill. Selected videotapes 1978 – 1990. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1994, unpaginated.
Vischer, Theodora, ed. Gary Hill: Imagining the Brain Closer than the Eyes. Basel: Museum für Gegenwartskunst; Ostfildern: Cantz, 1995, p. 117. (In German: Gary Hill: Arbeit am Video. Basel: Museum für Gegenwartskunst; Ostfildern: Cantz, 1995, p. 122.)
Dantas, Marcello. Gary Hill: O lugar do outro/where the other takes place. Rio de Janeiro: Magnetoscópio, 1997, pp. 69, 79.
Gary Hill: Video Works. Tokyo: NTT InterCommunication Center, 1999, pp. 19 – 21.
Morgan, Robert C., ed. Gary Hill. Baltimore: PAJ Books / The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000, pp. 68, 82, 192, 215.
Gary Hill en Argentina: textos, ensayos, dialogos. Buenos Aires: Centro Cultural Recoleta, 2000, p. 8.
Gary Hill: Instalaciones. Córdoba: Ediciones Museo Caraffa, 2000, p. 73.
Hill (scape): Gary Hill’s video screening, performance and installation exhibition. Program notes. Hong Kong: Videotage, 2001, p. 4.
Lageira, Jacinto. Des premiers mots aux derniers silences in Gary Hill: Around & About: A Performative View. Paris: Éditions du Regard, 2001, pp. 11, 12 – 13.
Gary Hill: Selected Works and catalogue raisonné. Wolfsburg: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2002, pp. 81, 82, 102.
Quasha, George and Charles Stein. An Art of Limina: Gary Hill’s Works and Writings. Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, 2009, pp. 24, 100 – 110, 578, 603.
Note: This text is also used in the installation of the same name.
Text A
A voice spoke from the corner of the room. It was not at a right-angled corner. It was a wedge-like shape lit obtusely from a light bulb hanging on white zip cord inches above the floor. The cord extended to the ceiling where it was attached and guided by a set of screw eyes evenly placed diagonally from the center area of the ceiling to the opposite corner. From there it continued back down again and ended at a receptacle, level and eight feet of distance with the bulb. Two walls of the room were parallel, one longer and extending into the wedged corner. On the ground and against the walls were small piles of frosted glass equal in mass and shape. The piles and light bulb when seen as three points formed an imaginary line. On one side of the line a voice spoke its thoughts from the wedged corner projecting them out towards the light. On the other side an animal sat in a folding chair embracing itself making inaudible high-pitched sounds. The room was otherwise empty except for two stacks of sheets compressed between floor and ceiling for structural purposes. The separateness of the two stacks could only be distinguished by an occasional acoustical smear. I left the room exiting to a hallway. It was long enough to form extreme perspective looking in either direction with doors to other rooms on both sides. I crossed the hall and entered the room opposite me.
Text B
It was early afternoon and the room was well lit by natural light. Rows of windows filled the walls except one which was freshly painted. A cluster of plumbing fixtures ran up through a template shape in the floor and out through another template shape in the wall close to the ceiling. The fixtures were galvanized steel and visually separated the empty wall from the entrance to the space, a cement archway. People congregated in the middle of the room drinking, talking and smoking. They were unnecessarily close to each other with an eight-foot band of floor space surrounding them. I walked around the room in the space allotted to me, observing the people and looking out the windows to the streets down below. The noise from the traffic was inordinately loud, being several stories down, compared to the people’s voices which were unintelligible at only a few paces away. The aural distortion may have been formed by an elaborate draft caused by the sheer amount of windows and the way in which they were open. Moving one’s head from side to side revealed a sinusoidal shape sequencing from partially opened to partially closed windows. The peoples’ drone unexpectedly faded as they noticed wet paint on their clothes, hands, drinking glasses and faces. I left the room exiting to a hallway. It was long enough to form extreme perspective looking in either direction with doors to other rooms on both sides. I crossed the hall and entered the room opposite me.