The J.Street Project
Susan Hiller
DAAD and Compton Verney
English and German
Hardcover
644 Pages
125 x 175 mm
2005
ISBN 9780954654580
Taking three years to complete, this complex study extends on Hiller’s interests in exploring historical events that are visually and emotionally compelling. Presented here is an installation that contained both video and photographic works documenting every street in Germany whose name contains a reference to Jews. The result is a collection of images that are compelling in their feeling of sadness and absence that they provoke.
About the Artist
Susan Hiller was born in 1940 and grew up in and around Cleveland, Ohio until 1952 when her family moved to South Florida where she attended local schools and Coral Gables High School. She was awarded a scholarship to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and graduated in 1961. After a year in New York studying film and photography at The Cooper Union and archaeology and linguistics at Hunter College, Hiller went on to do postgraduate work at Tulane University in New Orleans with a National Science Foundation fellowship in anthropology. She conducted fieldwork in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize but became uncomfortable with academic anthropology’s claim to objectivity; she wrote that she did not wish her research to become part of anthropology’s ‘objectification of the contrariness of lived events’. During a lecture on African art, she made the decision to leave anthropology to become an artist.
Susan Hiller has been based mainly in London since the early 1960’s. After several exhibitions of her paintings and a series of collaborative ‘group investigations’, in the early 1980’s she began to make innovative use of audio and visual technology. Her groundbreaking installations, multi-screen videos and audio works have achieved international recognition and are widely acknowledged to be a major influence on younger British artists.
With a practice extending over 40 years, Susan Hiller is considered one of the most influential artists of her generation. Her work is found internationally in both private and public collections and her career has been recognized by mid-career survey exhibitions at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts (1986) and Tate Liverpool (1996), and, most recently by, a major retrospective exhibition at Tate Britain (2011).
susanhiller.org
About the Publisher
Compton Verney House Trust was founded by Sir Peter Moores and is funded by the Peter Moores Foundation.
comptonverney.org
DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program is one of the most sought-after scholarships in the world. Since 1963 around 20 internationally known and qualified artists of all ages, with a unique distinguished artistic signature and a body of work of their own, in the field of visual arts, film, literature and music are yearly invited to spend 12 months in Berlin. Invitations to filmmakers are issued for 6 months.
F or visual arts, an international jury nominates and selects the artists. Therefore, no applications are possible for visual arts.
daad.de
Further Reading
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hiller-the-j-street-project-t14660
