'What is a Genius award?' Credit: Kelly O
What is a Genius award?
  • Kelly O
  • ‘What is a Genius award?’

Gary Hill is the most famous artist from Seattle that nobody from Seattle knows about. This year alone, he’s showing in Brussels, Long Beach, New York (three times), Moscow, Yokohama, Halifax, Berlin, Vienna, Essen (Germany), Chattanooga (Tennessee), Prague, Athens, Sydney, Chicago, Montreal—and that’s just temporary exhibitions, not including all the museums around the world where his videos are on regular display as part of the permanent collection. Wandering through the Philadelphia Museum of Art last week, I happened to run into a Gary Hill video—sandwiched between the Mexican modernism room and the Marcel Duchamp room.

Gary Hill, surfing maniac and hungry hungry 2011 Stranger Genius in Film.
  • Kelly O
  • Gary Hill, surfing maniac and hungry hungry 2011 Stranger Genius in Film.

In other words, the man is so busy being a genius, he does not have time to know what a Genius Award is: When the Genius Committee arrived at his Belltown studio yesterday to surprise him with a QFC sheet cake, he had no idea why we were there, even when we explained that he is this year’s Stranger Genius in Film.

“So… what is a Genius Award?”

Hill started to light up a little when we told him: It includes this QFC sheet cake (with rainbow sprinkles), a $5,000 check with no strings attached, and a huge citywide party to celebrate all the Geniuses, in Visual Art, Film, Theater, Books, and Music. Mark your calendars! The party is Friday, September 16, at the Moore, with Wild Orchid Children and Wheedle’s Groove. Yesterday, we announced that DK Pan is this year’s Genius in Visual Art. We’ll roll out the rest of the winners today.

Hill is coming to the Genius Party—which is amazing given his traveling schedule. If he’s not traveling for work, he’s traveling to surf. He is a surfing maniac. (He loves Neah Bay.)

He’s also a video maniac. His studio looks like a cross between a VHS storage warehouse, a surfboard factory, and a tricked-out recording studio. When we tell him he’s won the Film award, he immediately says, “I’ve never made a film.”

Instead, he’s been making video art since 1973.

In Seattle, he’s probably best known for three works: Tall Ships, a 90-foot dark corridor in which ghostly video figures approach you as you walk; Wall Piece, in which Hill throws himself at a wall repeatedly while reciting a text, this footage accompanied in the gallery by a pain-inducing strobe light (both Tall Ships and Wall Piece are owned by and occasionally shown at the Henry); and Blind Spot, featured in an exhibition about surveillance at 911 Media Arts Center a few years ago.

Hill was born in 1951 in Santa Monica, California, and his disciplined but staunchly anti-authoritarian work captures an entire strain of tension running through American history.

Here’s more info on the Genius Awards, and how to donate to the Genius cause. Remember: Friday, September 16. More Genius surprises to come…

Jen Graves (The Stranger’s former arts critic) mostly writes about things you approach with your eyeballs. But she’s also a history nerd interested in anything that needs more talking about, from male...

9 replies on “And the 2011 Stranger Genius Award for Film Goes to… Gary Hill!”

  1. (You list the party as September 17th halfway through (in the hyperlinked text) but then Friday Sept 16th in bold at the bottom of this post. FYI. Still, Brendan called it August 16th on his post, so you’re doing much better *smile*)

  2. This is not in any way a complaint, but it kind of seems like there are two genius awards for visual art this year? Congratulations to both of them!

  3. I Love Hill’s work and he is clearly a genius and then some, but is this the proper use of the award? Career-wise, he is light years beyond many of the past winners. I would expect the award to go an artist who’s genius is just now beginning to blossom. This years art recipient, DK Pan is a perfect example. I also think it’s a bit odd to peg him as a film maker when he is clearly an artist existing in the art world and not film. Even hill says he’s never made a film. He makes art. Perhaps I’ve lost site of the original intent of the award but this seems odd. I’d like to hear from others on this subject.

  5. @3:

    It’s not unheard of for Genius Awards to go to artists already well-established in their careers – Sherman Alexie and Jonathan Raban are two who come most immediately to-mind – rather than to, say, emerging or “mid-career” artists. And while Hill may consider himself a visual artist, he is chosen media is clearly film, so it doesn’t seem inappropriate, even if it does run somewhat contradictory to most people’s notion of what “cinema” is supposed to be.

    Because, that’s what geniuses do – push the field in which they work to the point of breaking though its perceived limitations.

  6. All good points Comte. I guess I have much more enthusiasm for the award when folks like DK Pan, Susie Lee or Susan Robb win it. Although I still must respectfully disagree with Hill winning in film….as it relates to this award anyway.

  7. http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweek…

    This is pathetic. A shameless reflection on a.big nothing of a supposed honor. Rewarding him does not as you probably think stand in the annals of “art scandal triumphing over the establishment” etc…it is just plain bad judgement. It is no wonder art grants and awards are falling off like dead flies with no support. It is this type of thing that gives tha whole grant-award thing a bad
    name, period. This is not what the NW art scene needed and shame on you…this is not badass or fuckin cool Jen, just lame.but I’m sure the party will be awesome!

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