DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN
2023. Performance.
What happens if you hire a psychic medium to contact the ghost of Susan Hiller? There’s a lot going on in a séance. The medium carries the pressure to perform, to deliver proof not just of a spirit, but of their own ability to perceive it. The audience brings expectation too, wanting to see something extraordinary, to witness the impossible, while also quietly wondering if it will all just fizzle out. This tension (between what is hoped for, and what might happen) is where this work lives. Susan Hiller (1940-2019) was a key figure in British art, known for her interest in the paranormal. She felt that artists who participate in séances are "missing the point". Whether Hiller appears or not, the real focus in this work is on the act of seeking itself: noticing how the audience moves between certainty and doubt. The work is about the spatial and psychological dynamics (between people, belief, imagination, and absence) that are activated by the presence of a purported psychic medium.
