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In an earlier work, Volksboutique (1996-97), Hill created
and operated a second-hand clothing shop in the recently opened eastern sector
of Berlin. In all respects, it seems to have been an ordinary shop where people
bought clothes because they liked them and/or they were cheaper than new clothes.
And so it was. But it was also a space, an entity invented and run by an artist,
someone who had also been a masseuse and a band singer, among other things, that
involved her in acquiring clothes, displaying and pricing them, conversing with
customers, serving tea, etc. These were the materials of the work being done
and the work being made, as it existed from moment to moment. Work within space
and over time, representing time and space. It was also about the interaction
of people assuming identities, their own and those of previous owners of the
clothes, what they said and how that suited the clothes they were in, the people
they were with, and the space they occupied in eastern Berlin. So the time span
was something like thirty years or more, depending on whether you began with
the space in the building or the clothes or the people.
"Pilot" has a similar time span, though it is in some ways
both more specific and more open-ended (toward continuing the past into the future).
For my generation television was a futuristic enterprise. It is the most modern
thing one could--and emblematically, at least, still can-- think of. I associate
it with the 1939 World's Fair, and with its real emergence in the post-World
War II years. For Hill's generation it's probably a rather dated medium, though
powerful. The late night talk show goes back to the 1950s, to Jerry Lester, Jack
Paar, and Steve Allen, and it hasn't really changed much since then. The host
sits behind a desk and interviews guests seated next to him. Interviews are interspersed
with sketches, musical numbers, and, of course, commercials. I think the introductory
monologue by the host goes back that far as well, or at least to Johnny Carson.
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