Hans-Ulrich Obrist Hear Us: Featuring Bill Burns

Hardcover | 16.51 x 3.18 x 24.13 cm | 224 pp

Black Dog Publishing | 2015 | 9781910433065

Perhaps best known for his Safety Gear for Small Animals (SGSA) project, which was first shown at 303 Gallery in New York in 1994, conceptual artist Bill Burns works across a variety of disciplines to reveal the perpetual power play between natural orders and cultural formations. Hans-Ulrich Obrist Hear Us is a collection of writings exploring the transgressive and transdisciplinary nature of Burns' practice.

The publication is richly illustrated with material representing Burns' work across photography, performance, writing and artists' books. In her Foreword to the publication, Dannys Montes de Oca Moreda recognises that the after-effect of Burns' work is deeply disillusioning, breaking up and foreclosing the harmonious unity of identity, micro and macrocosmic alike. Curator and art historian Dan Adler draws attention to the intrinsic satire informing Burns' work: a fondness for revering the meaningless while casting doubt on the venerable. Lastly, art critic Jennifer Allen uncovers some of the forces at work within Burns' narrativisation of his personal life and reflection on his role as an artist, asserting that the act of forgetting is structural to Burns' overall narrative composition. Hans-Ulrich Obrist Hear Us also includes a first-person narrative by Burns, telling the story of his life through episodes that, although seemingly incongruous, have played a formative role in the development of the artist's career. This history, like memory, is less contiguous than spontaneous, more preoccupied with prophecies and mood swings than the sterility of factuality.