Christopher Gill on Susan Hiller

Susan Hiller witness 2000 biennale of sydney 2002 watch ! he is listening ! "had focused on our house, when we passed by our house" a six year old boy stands in a moon lit gallery, motionless & alone parentless but poised, a car- stereo speaker "we realized that it could not be a meteorite not beneath the clouds" denuded of its plastic cladding and attached to a long length of sheathed "a blue white light" copper wire is cupped to one ear, a serene babbling "a blue green illumination" emanates from 599 other speakers, each uttering testimonies to ufo sightings and alien "a few men dressed in silver" abduction, cascade from a radial structure above. various other "my telephone rang at 2 am" spectator bodies are arranged within the installation, they too attach speakers "i was shocked to see a huge rugby ball shining in the sky" to their ears, and like the six year old they are calm and irrefutably present, their body language "i was sitting in a tube, a vacuum tube" serene rather than clutching "drove like mad back to the petrol station". the configuration of the spectator citizens evoke "tell the media do not panic we mean no harm" a sense of civic harmony rarely experienced these days, in the early years of world war three "my name is fred i don't want to give my surname". a mother and daughter seem to dance "at the railway track i stopped to allow a man leading a cow pass by" or rather frolic around the installation as if killing off idle moments around a fountain in the town square "followed all the way by the ufo". there is no time here only order, a voluptuous young women enters giggles and then leaves to fetch her boyfriend "the wife of the man leading the cow" and while they listen "when i rang the police they said the chief inspector had seen it" i notice the six year old has spirited himself away. abducted ? "they did not stop" another man, older but still young, sits "a bright orange illumination" in the corner, outside the radius of the installation but not apart "a bright orange illumination heading north . north east" on a wooden chair vacated by the mesuem security guard, quietly watching like an empowered citizen "i am very sure it wasn't a plane i've never seen a plane act like that" drinking coffee, playing chess as a sleeping baby in a pram is briefly abandoned "then it reversed and dropped to the ground" by its nanny dead in the center of the installation, and the baby wakes and she too assumes the posture of self possessed citizenry "i could hear a voice in my head a very clear voice" waiting there, without a trace of anxiety for the nanny to pick her up. watch, she is listening! Christopher Gill