In Equal Time Gary Hill experiments during a narrative and an image structured by symmetry and synchronicity. The black and white image consists of twisted, vertical lines, which are reminiscent of the arrangement of ropes in Bits.

The text is divided into two parallel narrations. They give two points of view on a visit to an imaginary exhibition. The first describes the exhibition and the work, which consists of covering the walls of the gallery in non-drying, white paint. The second describes visitor's behaviour at the opening reception: they drink, they discuss, move around and, finally, notice that they are covered in wet paint. Both accounts share a common passage: "I left the room, exiting to a hallway. It was long enough to form extreme perspective looking in either direction with doors to the other rooms on the both sides. I crossed the hall and entered the room opposite me." The double text and the image share the same process and the same aim: identify two space-times, join and then separate them. The image starts on the vertical edges of the screen, when the voices off, spoken by the artist, begin their accounts. The time lag in the appearance of the images is residual, but it marks the succession of the voices and their parallel flow. More lines are added, from left and right, until they overlap in the middle of the screen. At this point the two voices speak the sentences that they have in common. The image becomes vibrant and watery. In the middle of the tape, both parts of the image start retreating very slowly, and the narrations separate again. The last image, identical to the first, is the culmination of the symmetrical process.

Several of Gary Hill's works are built on the relation between a narration and an abstract representation of space-time. In Processual Video, a line rotating in the screen advances in parallel to the narrative. The text of Black / White / Text describes the image of the tape and evolves mathematically on the feedback model of the image: the number of syllables in each sentence is double the number in the preceding one. The images in Glass Onion evolve using a similar process, moving from the central screen to peripheral monitors. This installation achieves the transition from one space to another that Gary Hill has experimented with in Equal Time, in one screen and a text.

Thérèse Beyler