Primarily Speaking (1983)

A single-channel version of the multi-monitor, multi-channel installation of the same title, Primarily Speaking offers a series of variations on the themes set forth in Around & About, integrating the social and political implications of electronic media. This pivotal tape extends the concerns and strategies of Around & About, coding, decoding and recoding the contexts of human interaction and more fully elaborating the earlier tape's expression of a longing for communion through language — "We are an act of faith," Hill entreats. Turning cliches like "take my word for it" into poetry through transformative juxtapositions, Hill employs a range of image/audio relationships and a more complex binocular construction that emphasizes the imagery, plays with context shifts, and foregrounds the implied dialogue.