Reflections on Bill Viola

Reflections On Bill Viola, and How I Connect to His Work

Something I find very comforting about Viola’s work is that I can relate to his themes, and his preoccupation with experiences that all humans have in common. The more I look into his work, the more I respect him and what he is trying to put across; not necessarily images but ideas and feelings; we are all connected in a small way, we all experience the same things, we all are born, we all float along, we all die.

When I first started researching his work I came across Memoria (2000), and I was astonished to find I understood what he had based it on. (Viola bases most of his work on personal experiences) Although lots of critics and reviewers had declared it to be a modern day Shroud of Turin, the idea for it originally came from a memory of Viola’s when he was a young boy. He used to stay awake long after everyone had gone to bed in his house and stare at the ceiling in the silence that enveloped him. He described it as seeing salt and pepper pixels moving, a kind of ‘retinal grain’. I completely related with that because it was something I used to do as child myself. That was a kind of revelatory moment for me as it is not often I can empathise in such a basic way with an artist’s work. Yes, I can connect with the beauty of, say Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston, or the honesty of Jo Spence, but it is rare to find out you have several experiences in common with someone you are researching.

Another piece that immediately struck me upon undertaking this research was Nantes Triptych (1992). I had not realised until recently that I had actually seen this piece for myself in the flesh, I think it was at the opening of the Tate Modern. At the time I remember being repulsed (in a young naïve way) by the unflinching camera gaze upon the woman giving birth, being deeply saddened by the dying woman on the right, and feeling an empathy with the floating man in the middle. I was particularly struck by the right hand panel, having lost my mother only the year before, and as the whole work itself made me feel quite uncomfortable in my skin, I moved onto the next room. But the piece has stayed with me, resurfacing with this research. The following is a quote from the man himself, quite fitting how I feel about the triptych. “You need to spend your own time with the work. Some walk by; others stop and study it… the meaning comes in on a more unconscious level.”

I also relate with Heaven and Earth (1992) with the two monitors with a newborn and a dying person reflecting on each other’s screen. For me this is the perfect symbol of how the act of being born and dying are inextricably linked. Although into mysticism and aspects of devotional spiritualism, Viola seems to be quite pragmatic with his studies and appreciation of art, be in ancient or contemporary. A quote of his expressed in a cathedral in Assisi, Italy about the painted panels also makes sense in regards to his installations; “the piece is the entire space, in which you are surrounded by images”.

One of the reasons I think that Viola is such a fan of slow motion video is because life seems to pass so slowly, one slow second at a time if it doesn’t seem even slower. That’s one of the reasons why I have favoured high-speed video for this module because I feel as though university life has just flown by; I still find it hard to believe that next semester is my last.

Although Viola’s work, in terms of themes, hasn’t obviously and directly influenced my work for this project, I notice that there are elements in it that everyone can connect to. With Plan A (my hourly photographs), they may not be earth shatteringly inspiring, but everyone, like me, lives their life a day, an hour, at a time. Everyone looks half asleep in the morning, everyone feels bored at some point of his or her day. The same is true for Plan B; everyone has spent time on their own doing not much. Although I wasn’t busy for that hour (and feeling very aware of the camera) the time flew by, again which is why I favoured the high-speed video playback. For Plan C it is clear that everyone eats, but I feel like it is more of a comment on how we don’t pay attention to our food when we eat, just going through the motions and merely stopping when it has run out.

I have enjoyed using video in this module, and getting used to the technology and researching Viola has opened my eyes to the potential of the medium, and I am looking forward to exploring it more in the future.