The Provisional Texture of Reality

Art's sixth sense

A former anthropologist, Susan Hiller has been a pioneer in exploring the arena between the art domain of the world in general. Her involvment in art and feminism, her postcolonial analyses of cultural politics are foregrounded in this volume which brings together previously published texts and interviews, improvised talks, papers, invitational keynote lectures, discussions with other artists, and more.

The collection of texts documents Susan Hiller’s incisive interventions in current debates around the shifting roles of art and theory, shedding new light on the interface between critical writing and visual art practice. Science, magic, the senses, (mis)understandings, and the continuing lure of psychoanalysis are among the subjects that Hiller interrogates. Structured in three sections, the book, simultaneously wide-ranging, worldly, and deeply personal, may read as a portrait of the artist as public intellectual.

The book is part of the Positions series, co-published with Les Presses du réel and dedicated to artists’ writings.