WITNESS the VISITORS – a potent trinity

For many, the extended moments of isolation in the harsh shadows of world wide pandemic restriction have paradoxically yielded some totally unexpected moments of astonishment steeped in wonder.  I’ve had a number of these moments, one of which I will share with you. For me it echoed the often boundless enrichment that comes with the curious juxtapositions of life long passions. A trinity of these came together for me during April 2020 and beyond – science, art and the UFO.  These have been life long interests of mine.

I was searching the internet for media and culture references to a particular Australian locality well known for UFO and possibly related strange phenomena.  I won’t specify the locality for now – another time - but a particular web find literally reached out and dragged me into its fascinating embrace. 

What was the site that had entangled me in such a fascinating way?  It was the late Susan Hiller’s “Witness” art installation exhibition which originally appeared in London in 2000.

Source: https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/susan-hiller-tate-britain/2234https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/susan-hiller-tate-britain/2234

Susan Hiller (Image source: Wikipedia)

You can begin an exploration of the beauty and fascination of this work and the extraordinary legacy of its late creator Susan Hiller (1940-2019) at the Artangel site: 

https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/witness/


I soon realised that I had experienced some of this remarkable work myself in Sydney Australia around May 2002 when the exhibition ran at the Museum of Contemporary Art as a major part of the Sydney Biennale festival. I was in no doubt attracted to the event organiser Richard Grayson’s theme: “(The World Maybe) Fantastic.”

Here from the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper review of 17 May 2002: 

“A better exemplar of (The World May Be) Fantastic's brief would be hard to nominate, although the American-born Susan Hiller's Witness, 2000, at the MCA, has much to recommend it as a paradigmatic work. 

“This suspended field of audio speakers, a starry night Van Gogh would have loved and understood, soaks the listener in a shower of tales of alien visitations, UFO sightings and weird paranormal experiences. Once you get the gist, even the foreign-language narratives - Spanish, Dutch, German, Chinese and so on - sound intelligible.”  

Here is a review of Witness from the The Sunday Times of London, dated 4 June 2000:

“When you first walk in, all you hear are waves of whispers. As your eyes grow accustomed to the dark, you see that these are emerging from a forest of 500 loudspeakers suspended from the roof. Moving from speaker to speaker, from testimony to testimony, you listen in on a mass human exodus from sense and factuality.” — Waldemar Januszczak

Exploring the Artangel link to Witness I soon moved way past my initial purpose and made, what was for me, a wonderful discovery – a book: “Susan Hiller: Witness.”  The Artangel site describes it: “People see strange things. Lights in the sky, mysterious phenomena, visions and visitations — things they can't explain but know they saw. Susan Hiller has been collecting stories of these sightings for years. Some of them are prosaic and descriptive. Others are visionary and marvelous. All of them are true. Hundreds of eyewitness accounts were brought together through years of research for "Witness", Susan Hiller's ambitious installation, which asks us to explore the area where rational explanations no longer seem to hold. This accompanying publication, presented as the artist's "Witness" research file, contains a large selection of the original witness statements, as well as a selection of Hiller's personal notes, sketches, and drawings on the work as it developed. To seduce the reader into experiencing the visions of others, the book comes with a CD containing 50 witness statements.”

Fortunately, the site had some extracts and images from Susan Hiller’s book. My wonderful discovery was this: A “Witness” statement from "02.22 China (man)" stated to be by Colonel Li about a UFO incident in China under his command in 1998.

Here was a purported statement from a witness and a case I was long familiar with, but expressed in a way and detail I had not previously encountered.  I had expanded information, including quotes from Colonel Li from the Wuhan Evening News of 25 October 2010, 12 years after the date of the incident.  The 2010 account talks about the writer/journalist visiting with Commander Li and other witnesses in 1998 soon after the original events.  I had not been able to find any account of this incident earlier than 2010.  Even CURO – the China UFO Research Organisation – referred to the same source I had.  There were plenty of other Chinese language versions of the story but they all seemed based on the 2010 Chinese media story.

There in Susan Hiller’s Witness work and book was Colonel Li talking about events (in the “voices” it was recreated from the words used by Susan Hiller’s source) that were related to the extraordinary 1998 Chinese “solid light” case I had been deeply researching since 2010:

From a 2012 talk I gave - "UFO in my eyes - Bill Chalker's personal journey through the complexities of the Chinese UFO experience and its reflections in the wider worldwide UFO experience" I put up a PowerPoint slide about this case:

While I focused on Zhao Xu’s involvement, the quote I highlighted came from Colonel Li (not from Zhao Xu, as I first thought), based on the close-up witness observations from the jet interceptor he had sent up – the J-6 crew, Hu Shaoheng and Liu Ming:

"Surprisingly these two light beams of light were not as we normally see light beams, as has been according to the distance and spread, but as two light-emitting entities, sticking out from the bottom of the UFO ending on a certain length. At least today we have not got control of this sort of light technology."

 

I have written about this important case before, as it represented an impressive example of the apparent deployment of so-called “solid light.” 

 

Now, in a pandemic isolated world, during April 2020 I wanted to find out how Susan Hiller had managed to use an apparent quote from Colonel Li in her art, when deep searches of the Chinese internet reference for 1998 through to 2010 had so-far failed to reveal it.

 

I knew who could help, so I reached out to her, and help me she did, in striking ways – Anne Loxely created connections with Sydney 2002 event, with Artangel in London, which led to contact with Susan Hiller’s son. Anne reminded me, “that project we did together was SUCH fun.”

Anne Loxely and me at the Visitors exhibition

Back in 2007, Anne and her co-curator, Regina Walter, approached me with their idea for a UFO & related art exhibition at the Penrith Regional Gallery (& The Lewers Bequest), west of Sydney, at the beautiful house and grounds overlooking the Nepean River. Anne and Regina asked me to join them as a consultant and writer.  I asked what they had in mind, perhaps a single room display. No, it turned out the whole of the multi-roomed gallery was turned over to the exhibition – “THE VISITORS – the Australian response. 15 established artists contributed a body of fascinating works ranging from paintings, sculptures, installations and other artistic media expressions. I contributed an essay “The OZ Files Unbound” and recommended reading list for the 64-page exhibition catalogue, extensive material, including case files for an evidence room and a walk through lecture covering the evidence and my take on the exhibition artworks. The exhibition was well received and highly successful.  

 

Co-curator, Regina Walter, and me at the Visitors exhibition

Some of the evidence room exhibition:

(Above) Myself and some of the evidence room - all items were from my personal files/collection.

Some of the great art of the Visitor exhibition:

Tony Albert, AustrALIEN, 2007

Vernon Treweeke, "Self portrait Painting a UFO", c. 2005

The UFO in the detail, in fluorescent paint. Put on the special glasses & what do we see?

Anne Loxely & Regina Walter with Adam Norton's Roswell Timeline & "Big Science"

Artist James De Blas with his paintings

Simon Champ describing his art

Anne perhaps contemplating Luke Roberts painting "Alpha Painting (Women from the Quarters)", 1999-2006

I have always enjoyed art in its many forms.  In fact, in my high school years I was one of those oddities who were not well catered for in the Australian public education system of the 1960s – somebody who wanted to do both art and science. Even though I excelled in my school art journey, ultimately I had to make a choice by my 5th year and science won out. Never-the-less my love of art and my abilities in drawing were never really silenced. Some of my sketches illustrated Australia’s first UFO entity catalogue I co-authored with Keith Basterfield in 1976 and others have accompanied my various reports and case investigations over the years. My sketching skills became a very useful tool in my research. For example my rendering of the 1969 Harwood Island close encounter:

And (above) my "forensic" rendering of Victor Z.'s 1966 Westall close encounter

None of it would have made it into mainstream art and I occasionally wondered “what-if?” What if I had pursued the artistic vision more forcefully? Still, art does hold an alluring siren call over me and I enjoy and meditate on its wonderful expressions.  

The Witness and the Visitor exhibitions are wonderful expressions of that potent trinity of science, art and UFOs.

Below, my own "impressive" immersive art installation, "Are the Visitors getting on top of Bill?" (2007):

(All photos from the Visitors exhibition: Bill Chalker)

 A version of this story appeared in the May/June 2020 issue of the UK e-magazine "UFO Truth"