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Hiller, Susan
Born 1940, USALives in London
IN THE GALLERY
The Last Silent Movie’s black screen illuminates how individuals and communities become victims as they are swallowed up, involuntarily assimilated, into the global circulation of ideas and capital branded as “democratization.” The work features archival sound recordings of extinct or endangered languages, subtitled on the screen.
However, Hiller’s film not only looks at the marginalized but also addresses the mechanisms of cultural hegemony and homogenization, and of closure. In addition to her unsettling “anthropological” material as such, Hiller’s spotlight is on the machinery through which we commonly approach it—the intellectual, emotional, and ideological processes whereby these materials are comprehended and classified. She addresses a fundamental problem of democracy, particularly in the age of branding: the ongoing muting of our differences and the spread of a common mindset in the service of conformity.
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