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A Sheffield artist will try to communicate with a dead woman tonight in the same place where she appeared exactly 19 years ago. Tyler Mellins never met Susan Hiller in person before her death in 2019, but tonight he hopes to communicate with her in a seance with the help of spirit medium Kim Alexis.

Hiller was considered one of the most influential artists of her generation and tonight’s session takes place exactly 19 years after she participated in the Haunted Media exhibition at Site Gallery, Sheffield. The session, titled Desperately Seeking Susan, was inspired by a series of coincidences that linked the two artists even after Hiller’s death.

Tyler said: “I discovered her right after she died and I always felt like we were ships crossing in the night. It’s my response to that and I wonder what would have happened if we could have chatted.

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Tonight’s session will be in the same room that Hiller’s exhibit was held in in 2004. Having worked for a paranormal investigations firm for nearly 10 years, Tyler retains an element of cynicism and skepticism along with his belief in ghosts and apparitions

He said: “As I got older, I became very interested in the line between what is real and what is not. I think the spooky really plays into that.”

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Hiller was a pioneer of multimedia work, known for her innovative use of video and audio in the 1980s. Haunted Media examined the link between new media and the supernatural. Hiller’s piece was inspired by stories of ghostly apparitions seen on television screens when the programming ends at midnight.

Tyler’s earlier work touches on the barrier between fact and fiction, truth and lie, and the way this influences the everyday, much of it in the form of video, sculpture, and installation. The session comes at the end of the Dark Echoes exhibition that concluded on February 26.

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