Gary Hill — Incidence of Catastrophe

1988

Artists: Gary Hill · Year: 1988 · Medium: Single-channel video — 43 minutes, composited imagery with dense post-production layering · Substrate: Video production infrastructure including video synthesizers, computer-based editing, keying and layering equipment · Place: Seattle, Washington, USA · Institution: Independent; later acquisition by multiple major museums Gary Hill's Incidence of Catastrophe (1987–88) is a 43-minute single-channel video work engaging the writings of Maurice Blanchot. The piece combines dense visual layering — composited imagery, text overlays, signal-processing effects — with an extended philosophical narration. The viewer who watches Hill's work closely is reading Blanchot while looking at imagery that enacts, distorts, and comments on Blanchot's text. The piece is canonical in 1980s American video art because of its ambition. Where most video art of the period operated on single-channel shorter-duration tape lengths, Hill produced a feature-length work with the compositional density of an experimental-literature text. The production made significant use of computer-based post-production — non-linear editing, digital layering, signal processing — and demonstrated what video art could do when it had access to the period's best post-production infrastructure. Hill's practice has continued through the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s across installation, single-channel video, and sculptural video. His earlier work Processual Video (1980–82) had established his interest in the relation between signal and text; Incidence of Catastrophe was the mature realization of that interest. His later Inasmuch As It Is Always Already Taking Place (1990) extended the investigation into multi-monitor installation. He has been widely collected — MoMA, Whitney, Centre Pompidou, Guggenheim, and others. He continues to work, based in Seattle. Lore Hill had trained as a sculptor before turning to video in the mid-1970s; his early work used Sony Portapak equipment. The Incidence of Catastrophe production involved extensive collaboration with video engineers at WNET's Television Lab and with sound designers; the piece's specific layering is a post-production achievement. Hill has been a thoughtful interviewee about Blanchot and his other philosophical sources across many published conversations. Sources • Hill, Gary — garyhill.com • Electronic Arts Intermix — Hill catalog records • Mignot, Dorine (ed.) — Gary Hill (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 1993)