New Media Representations: Bill Viola

1. New Media Representations:Bill Viola

2. Enduring Understanding Students will understand that… the use of ready-mades and other media have created new approaches to art and expanded its definition.

3. Essential Questions Overarching How did new technology change the meaning of art? What role does the artist and viewer have in art creation? Topical What do you think of the statement “life is change.” What is perception?

4. When 1951 - How Video Installations Video Tapes Where America Japan Bill Viola Why Explore the complexity and power of human emotions Interest in the paintings of old masters, especially Renaissance painters. Which Video Art What Sense perception Life & Death 5W1H

5. Bio-Data 1973: Obtained his BFA in Experimental Studios from Syracuse University. 1973 -80: He performed with avant-garde composer David Tudor as a member of his Rainforest ensemble. 1977: Invited by La Trobe University (Melbourne, Australia) to show his video-tapes. 1978: He married KiraPerov and began lifelong collaboration working and traveling together. 19 83: Turned instructor in Advanced Video, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California. 1995: Represented U.S. in the 46th Venice Biennale. 1998: Guest scholar residence at Getty Research Institute.

6. When 1870-1966: D.T. Suzuki and Zen in America. 1950s: Experimental Music- music that challenges the common notions of music. A term coined by John Cage. 1960s: The rise of video art. 1960s: The emergence of Hippies subculture.

7. Where America • An American subculture group sprung up during the early 60s- The Hippies and spread around the world. • It is a culture that espoused religious and cultural diversity. • The Hippies were into Eastern philosophy and spiritual concepts. Italy • Art/tapes/22 operated from 1973 to 76. It was one of the first video art studios in Europe. • Although it ran for only three short years as an international residency for artists, it has also been exceptionally prolific during its time. Japan • Sony produced first portable video camera in 1965. As a result, artists quickly seized this new easy-to use medium.

8. Which Contemporary Art • Art that belongs to the same period of time, as in current. • Refers to the present time, as in now. • Can also refer to being current with any specified time, as in the past. Video Art • Uses moving pictures. • Comprises of video and/or audio data. • Is named after the video tape. • Differs from film because it does not necessarily rely on the conventions that define theatrical cinema. • May or may not use actors, dialogue, or even narrative or plots. • Has more varied intention rather than to entertain- for eg: to explore the boundaries of the medium or to attack the viewers’ expectations of video as shaped by the cinema.

9. Hatsu-Yume • A visual journey through the landscape of Japan. • The landscape features rural areas of the far north (Osoresan Mountain) to the bright nocturnal city (Tokyo). • The work is arranged into one day- dividing “light and darkness, old and new, nature and city, object and subject, even rational thought and unconscious insight”. • Again, water appears in this work as rainstorm on a car and the natural element for fishes swimming in it. • The images switch from rural to urban, and back to rural. • The work unfolds like a visual trance in extended time, • Light is like water- functions as support for life for man and fish respectively. • Night is clearly death. Hatsu Yume, 1981. Video

10. Life and Death “I do not portray being, I portray passing”. - Montaigne- The Passing, 1991. Video tape

11. The Passing • A fifty-four minutes documentary video through the eyes and mind of Viola. • It’s themes- birth, life and death. • Images include water as well as desert- contrast. • It shows Viola as a restless sleeper and a man underwater. • It includes the sound of his dying mother’s heavy breathing. • There is also the environmental sound effects of night in the country. • The whole work is in black and white. • To find out more- please read http://www.lightmillennium.org/summer_02/bu_viola_the_passing.html

12. Heaven and Earth, 1992. Video installation, dimensions variable.

13. Heaven and Earth • A column-like structure enclosed in a small alcove. • It is made of wood and it extends from floor to ceiling. • There is a gap between the wooden column at eye level. • In this gap, two black and white video monitors are positioned facing opposite one another. • The upper monitor shows a close-up image of an old woman on the verge of dying. • The lower monitor shows a close-up image of a new-born, only days old. • The images are silent. • Due to the glass monitors, reflections of the image opposite can be seen. • This shows life and death reflecting and containing one another.

14. The Greeting, 1995. Video/sound installation, 4.3 x 6.6 x 7.8m Whitney Museum of Art, New York

15. The Greeting • Firstly, two women are engaged in a conversation when a third woman approaches. • One woman of the two seems to know the approaching woman more than the other. • A slight wind blows and the light shifts to the approaching woman. • Both women embrace and one leans and whispers something to the other, isolating the other woman. • Introductions are made, followed by exchange of pleasantries. • However, the underlying awkwardness is obvious.

16. The Greeting • Inspired by Pontormo’s Mannerist painting Visitation (1528-29). • It is a video image sequence projected onto a screen. • The screen is mounted onto the wall of a dark room. • The background- a barren urban environment with industrial buildings. • Presented in one take from a fixed camera position and projected vertically, like the painting from Porntomo. • The actions of the figures are seen in hyper slow motion. • A forty-five seconds event is stretched to a 10 minutes video. • The subtle aspects of the scene becomes apparent- body language. • The nuances of fleeting glances and gestures become heightened. Visitation, 1528-29 by Jacopo Pontormo Oil on panel, 202 x 156 cm Pieve di San Michele, Carmignano, Italy

17. The Crossing, 1996.

18. The Crossing • A video projection on the opposite sides of a standing monolithic vertical screen, placed at the center of the gallery. • On one side of the screen, its shows a man approaching the camera from a distance. He stops eventually and is slowly consumed by fire. • On the other side of the screen, the same man performs the same action, but this time, he is consumed by a torrent of water of water.

19. The Passions Series (An Exhibition) • An exploration of human emotions. • A look into the complexity and power of human emotions.

20. From The Passions Series Locked Garden, 2000 Colour video diptych in two freestanding hinged LCD flat panels, 40.6 x 65.4 x 13.9 cm Watch the video excerpt

21. Influence for Locked Garden • Viola becomes interested in the small devotional panels of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. • These panels were portable, suited for an increasingly mobile population. • The Locked Garden is a video version of these panels. • Both figures are presumably the man and wife figures. • They pose with their ideal images of a married couple in a time space of a minute. • This minute is then slowed down twelve times. • The scale of the work is intended to be read like a book. Mater Dolorosa and Christ Crowned with Thorns, ca.1490. Workshop of Dieric Bouts The National Gallery, London • The two videos become one- as if each is having a dialogue with the other.

22. From The Passions Series Six Heads, 2000. Colour video on plasma display mounted on wall, 102 x 61 x 8.9 cm • The work is a montage of six different takes screened on one plasma monitor. • The actor is filmed in various emotional states- joy, sorrow, anger, fear and awe and The subconscious (sleep/dreaming). • All emotional transitions return to a state of calm or rest. However, in the sixth frame, the man opens his eyes again. • His gaze is a reminder of one’s sentience- consciousness with the ability of the senses.

23. Influence for Six Heads • This is a painted study of four heads by Antonio de Pereda. • Viola is fascinated with how 17th century artist Josè Ribera portray a saint having visions that only he could see. • As a result, these visions are seen through the witness’s that is the saint’s facial expression. • Along the same line, Viola does not reveal the object of the man’s emotional reactions. • The object is a mystery, but more importantly, the changing emotions are what he needs to capture. Study of Heads , 1650-75. by Antonio de Pereda Oil on canvas, 50 x 33 cm Instituto de Valencia de Don Guan, Madrid

24. From The Passions Series Silent Mountain, 2001 Colour video diptych on two plasma displays mounted side by side on wall, 102 x 121.9 x 8.9 cm "Probably the loudest scream I have ever recorded is in the soundless work 'Silent Mountain'." - Bill Viola

25. Silent Mountain • Two actors are shot at different time separately. • They are talked through the 45 seconds of shooting by Viola. • They are brought to maximum compression/tension and then to great release/catharsis. • As Viola talks, they responds with hyper expressive physical action. • The woman twists, hugs herself, crouches and moves from one pose to another seen in some classical sculptures. • The man holds his head in agony and then leans back with one elbow raising over his head. • The gestures resemble classical poses and thus reinforces the timelessness of certain emotions that are manifested via he language of the body. • It registers the forces of change in nature- sudden and cataclysmic like a volcanic eruption. • Another theme explored in this work is the mechanism used to evoke empathy.

26. Influences for Silent Mountain Viola finds the painting austere, subdued and Zen-like. Colours are almost monochromatic except for the piercing red drapery behind the two figures. Laocoön, 1750 by Giovani Battista Foggini Bronze, 56.3 x 43.9 x 21.9 cm J. Paul Getty Museum, LA The mannerisms and gestures of the two actors in Silent Mountain emulate those of Hellenistic sculptures or Renaissance paintings of Saint Sebastian. The Annunciation , 1450-55. by Dieric Bouts Distemper on linen, 90 x 74.6 cm J. Paul Getty Museum, LA

27. From The Passions Series The Quintet of the Astonished , 2000. Video/sound installation, 4.3 x 6.6 x 7.8m Whitney Museum of Art, New York Watch the video excerpt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR9av-I35ME

28. Influence for Quintet of the Astonished • Viola was fascinated with this painting. • He felt that Christ appears calm amidst the aggression and threat seen in the figures around him. • Christ here is also staring out of the frame at the viewers- like a way out of the situation- his salvation through us. • He thinks that the painting shows us how we can view religious practice in the sense of “perfecting the individual” so that he/she can still remain calm and secure in whatever the situation, however challenging or turbulent. Christ Mocked (The Crowning with Thorns) , 1490 - 1500. by Hieronymus Bosch Oil on panel, 73.8 x 59 cm National Gallery, London

29. From The Passions Series Emergence, 2002 Colour HD video rear projection on screen mounted on wall in dark room, 198.1 x 198.1 cm Commissioned by the J.P. Getty Museum and The Getty research Institute, LA, California.

30. Influence for Emergence The Entombment, 1612 by Peter Paul Rubens Oil on canvas, 131.1 x 130.2 cm

31. Emergence • The image projected is the size of an altar. • The cross on the well-head suggests the front of an altar. • The setting and colours reminiscent of High Renaissance* (1450 – 1527) paintings. Some examples of HR artists- da Vinci, Michelangelo & Raphael. • The entire scene does not look like it comes from ordinary experience but from images that we see in art. • The man’s pale, slender but defined body looks like those marble statues by Renaissance sculptors Donatello and Michelangelo. • The lifting of the figure looks like a composition from Raphael and Titian.

32. Influences for Emergence Statue of David , 1504. by Michelangelo Buonarotti Marble, 410 cm Accademia delle Belle Arti, Florence St Mark , 1411-13. by Donatello Marble, 236 cm Orsanmichele, Florence

33. Influences for Emergence Entombment , 1507. by Raphael Sanzio Oil on panel, 184 x 176 cm Museo Galleria Borghese, Rome Italy Entombment of Christ , c. 1520. by Titian or Tiziano Vecelli Oil on canvas, 148 x 212 cm The Louvre, Paris

34. The Raft, 2004 Video/Sound Installation, Projection size, 396.2 x 223 m

35. The Raft, 2004 Video/Sound Installation, Projection size, 396.2 x 223 cm

36. The Raft, 2004 Video/Sound Installation, Projection size, 396.2 x 223 cm

37. The Raft • The entire work lasts about 60 seconds (1 minute) in real time. • It is slowed down and stretched up to 10 minutes. • Water is pumped and sprayed onto a standing crowd. • The men and women are thrown off balance and course. • Nevertheless, they rise back up at the end, drenched to the core. • The pumping and spraying of water on a seemingly oblivious crowd is paralleled to the “wake-up” call. • Their seemingly calm and sedentary life is being jolt into a sudden awakening. • The work is also metaphoric of destruction and survival- for eg: carthasis (sudden burst of release) after extreme suffering.

38. Darker Side of Dawn, 2005. Color video projection on wall in dark room, 325.6 x 579.1 cm James Cohan Gallery

39. The Darker Side of Dawn • It’s a video recording of a Californian Oak Tree. • A one hour long, 19-foot wide, silent projection of the tree. • The tree appears from total darkness into the blinding light with the sun shining directly into the camera, before fading into the darkness once again. • The footage plays continuously as it loops. • The light and the atmosphere change slowly even though it has been sped-up. • The still-image of the tree serves as an object for meditation. • The image creates a sense of time in nature- for eg: dawn and sunset is constantly changing within its brevity and the boundaries of the nocturnal world and daylight world are crossed.

40. Collaboration with Philharmonic Music Directors Tristan und Isolde, 2005. Scenograph Walt Disney Concert Hall

41. Tristan und Isolde • Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde- an opera music drama in three acts. • The opera opened in 2005 was an opera/scenograph by Viola. • Again, the elements of fire and water emerged. • To Viola, music is the rhythmical structuring of time. (For Tristan und Isolde images-http://wagneroperas.com/indextristanproject.html

42. What Subject Matter- Water and Fire • Fire and water is often used in religious imagery- for eg: at a metaphysical level with Hinduism and at a ritual level with Christianity. • They are the fundamental dynamism of nature. • Viola is drawn to the resonance of both fire and water- “the pulsing waves and undulating surfaces”, always changing and flowing.

43. What Subject Matter- People • Humans in their frailty and fragility. • Capture subtle emotions in humans through magnification. (Give some examples of such magnification using video). • Catharsis- a sudden release of pent-up emotions. • Human relations- eg: The Greeting

44. What Theme- Universal Human Experiences • Experiences like birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness. • His works are usually on life and death- the meanings. • He searches for the reasons of existence through his works. • However, it is not “loss” that he is concern with, but rather the “sublime¹ and the possibility of spiritual transcendence².”

45. What Observable Phenomena • Phenomena of sense perception- gaining awareness and understanding of what the senses register. • In terms of seeing, hearing, touching and even feeling. • It is an avenue to attain self-knowledge according to Viola. • Direct observation of the everyday- eg: meeting people, changing light (from day to night) are presented as something poetic and sublime.

46. Why Background • Almost drowned when he was six years old. • Remembered the incident by the artist as “the most profound, life-changing and transcendent experience” he has ever had (Douglas, 2005). • Lived in Florence, Italy in the 70s for 18 months. • Worked as a technical director (1974- 76) of production for Art/Tapes/22, one of the first video art studios in Europe. • Met a Sufi-inspired artist and storyteller when living in Italy. • Went to Japan in 1980 and stayed for one and a half year on a cultural exchange programme. He was artist in residence at Sony Corporation’s Atsugi Laboratories. • His son as born in 1988. • His mother died in 1991, followed by his father in 1999.

47. Why Influences- Western Art and Renaissance • Drawn to art from late Middle Ages to 1870s. • Interest in the paintings of old masters, especially Renaissance painters. • He likens contemporary time to those of the Renaissance- it was a period of new science and technology and propelled new ways of thinking.

48. Why Influences- Sufism • He is first enthralled with Jalaluddin Rumi, a Persian poet during his college days (see next slide). • He only discovered the larger tradition of Sufism when he read the stories by Idries Shah (given by the Sufi-inspired artist he met in Florence). • Then, he read the book The Sense of Unity by N. Ardalan and L. Bakhtiar on Persian Sufi-inspired architecture, which directed him to S. H. Nasr who described the total unified system of philosophy, religion and science that distinguishes Islam.

49. Why- Sufism. Jalaluddin Rumi • A thirteenth century Persian poet and mystic. • He once liken life as a bowl floating on the surface of an infinite ocean. As it floats, it gets filled with water from the ocean (acquisition of knowledge). And a point comes when the bowl gets completely filled to the brim, the container sinks and the water inside merges with the water outside (moment of death). • This analogy could have inspired him to use water as a significant motif in his works.

50. Why Influences- Buddhism • He studied Zen Buddhism with Zen master Daien Tanaka during the one and a half year Japan/US cultural exchange fellowship. • He’s also interested in Tibetan Buddhism. • Sees nature’s power composed of interacting opposites- e.g. Yin & Yang, life & death.