Susan Hiller on Art, Feminism, and the Irrational

In a 2011 interview with Sarah Lowndes, Susan Hiller discusses her major survey at Tate Britain, her anthropological background, and her artistic practice. Born in the US in 1940, Hiller trained as an anthropologist before moving to the UK in the early 1970s. She became known for works like Dream Mapping (1974), Dedicated to the Unknown Artists (1972/76), and Sisters of Menon (1972-79). Hiller rejects the rational/irrational dualism, stating that art should be true to experience. She describes herself as a foreigner in the UK, finding the cultural and political climate of the 1970s stimulating. She contrasts US and UK attitudes toward feminism and class, noting that in the US feminism is more advanced but class is unspoken. Hiller discusses her interest in Walter Benjamin's idea that the past exists only in the present, and her work The Last Silent Movie (2007) critiques the fetishization of language loss without addressing the people who die. She emphasizes that art should provide a genuine experience rather than being text-led. Her recent work at the time involved excavating ghosts of modernism and the occult, including a Gertrude Stein piece at Timothy Taylor Gallery. Reflecting on her Tate survey, Hiller finds it difficult but acknowledges that problems in each work enabled the next. She distinguishes her show from a complete retrospective, as she is not dead.