URA ARU (1986)

Recorded on location in Japan, this work was inspired by the notion of “acoustic palindromes,” aural versions of written palindromes, located in the Japanese language. Hill creates this palindromic world as a site for excavation, uncovering new meanings and images by focusing on reversals and double reversals of spoken words and analogous actions. What ultimately can be seen as an inter-textual weaving of language, image, and time (or what Hill calls, “origami time”) exposes the archetypal protagonists of Noh drama: god, man, woman, lunatic, demon. These dramatis personae appear in and around a series of conceptual vignettes based on the Noh play Lady Aoi.