One of the reasons even the newest media art can appear dated is that its techniques often overlap those used in cinema, television and music video. Commercial producers typically have more at their disposal than artists, and can therefore provide cleaner results.
“I really move back and forth, sometimes … delving in technology, but typically not super high-end technology,” he says. “I generally look for some sort of fallibility, some kind of crack in technology.”
Hill laughs when asked to compare his work and music videos. His pieces “may have to do with opening up time, which is significantly different than most music videos, which are sort of trying to make things happen as quickly as possible. This isn’t talking about apples and oranges; it’s like talking about fruit and meat.”
Commercial interests seem below Hill, making his appearance at Art Taipei all the more interesting. This afternoon at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum auditorium, the 2008 Asia Art Economy Forum includes a talk titled Chinese Focus: Development and Trend of Auction Markets in the Chinese World. On Sunday a speaker will tell listeners How to Collect Young Artists.
“The art market has destroyed artists as far as I’m concerned,” Hill says. “I think that the prices are completely and totally inflated, all misrepresentational and bad for long-term creativity and reality people.”
“When things sell for millions and millions of dollars and it’s just because people have the wool pulled over their eyes, it creates a false idea of value.”
While averse to terms like “video art,” Hill isn’t above coining a word or two himself. “Paralinguay” in the title of the work to be shown at Art Taipei is an anagram of the first names “Gary” and “Paulina” — from longtime collaborator Paulina Wallenberg-Olson, the woman who appears in the piece.
It seemed natural to ask an American artist famous for experimenting with language if he spoke anything other than English. A bit of French, he answered, and a little Japanese when he lived there for a year in the 1980s.
“And I can speak backwards. I learned it for some of my works.”
Then he said something, followed by a quick chuckle, that I still can’t understand, despite repeatedly listening to a recording of our conversation.
“It’s not a very used language,” he said.
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