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F i l m - P h i l o s o p h y
ISSN 1466-4615
http://www.film-philosophy.com
Volume 3 Number 28
July 1999
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Cynthia A. Freeland
Bill Viola and the Video Sublime
Bill Viola
_Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House, Writings 1973-1994_
Edited by Robert Violette in collaboration with the author
Introduction by Jean-Christophe Ammann
Thames and Hudson, 1995/reprinted 1998
ISBN: 0-500-27837-7
301 pp.
'Increase your necessity so that you may increase your perception.' --13th
century Persian Sufi mystic Rumi, quoted by Bill Viola (71).
This book functions as a record of video artist Bill Viola's work, also
offering his reflections on art, video history, perception, consciousness,
and even 'life and being itself' (152). There are entries from Viola's
notebooks and essays, together with drawings, sketches, and video stills
from his works and exhibitions. But despite the numerous illustrations and
the artist's comments upon his work, nothing in this book can convey what
Bill Viola's video work is actually like: stunning. If I had not seen some
of it myself I might be inclined to dismiss Viola as just another artist
with delusions of grandeur -- especially so given his penchant for grand
pronouncements and his tendency to quote pretentious-sounding mystical
authors with their vague, cosmic concepts.
However, this is one of the very few contemporary artists who have done
work that I would not hesitate to call sublime. I first saw some of Bill
Viola's videos and a video installation at the Contemporary Arts Museum in
Houston in 1988. I was harried, mesmerized, and even stupefied by them.
Harried by the horrific sounds of an electronic storm emanating from the
'Room for St John of the Cross', and mesmerized or stupefied by the
astonishing visual imagery and effects of some of his video pieces. In
'Chott-el-Djerid' ('A Portrait of Light and Heat', 1979) he filmed what I
had previously thought impossible, a mirage. What looked for a long period
of time to be empty shimmering desert heat materialized into an actual
mirage (if such is the term!) on the screen, of an oasis complete with
ocean and palm trees. Then it slowly dematerialized (some images are
reproduced in the book on pages 54-5, but they are a poor substitute for
the video). From this desert blaze we switched to the Arctic tundra of
Saskatchewan, viewing even more astonishing illusions effected by the
conjunction of landscape, weather, and light. In 'I Do Not Know What It Is
I am Like', Viola spent three weeks in wintry South Dakota, taping extended
scenes of a herd of bison. Their ponderous and massive stillness became an
odd mirror-image of the slowness and silence of the desert. A distinctive,
almost glacial consciousness seemed to emanate from their shaggy heads and
dark pupils. The artist represents their grazing on the prairie as a form
of meditation. Viola's videos demand energy, attention, and, most of all,
*patience* from viewers -- which probably explains why my students, from
the MTV instant-stimulus generation, complained that they were 'boring'.
_Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House_ includes an introduction,
'Violence and Beauty', by Jean-Christophe Ammann. That Ammann links
violence with beauty in his remarks probably reflects his own recognition
of what I have called the sublimity of Viola's work. Ammann too writes of
Viola's videotape 'Chott el-Djerid': 'The beauty of landscape, water,
light, and color is so unbearable that one wants to scream' (13). I would
suggest that what is involved here is precisely not beauty but the sublime:
sensory effects that overwhelm the viewer with the stupendous force and
nature of life, but in a way that somehow manages to be uplifting. (The
historical sublime, you might recall, was something so overwhelming it
became terrifying.) Ammann points out that Viola's videos show (as with the
haunting image of a disintegrating dead fish) that life itself is entangled
with death and with processes that are sometimes violent and destructive,
yet lovely. Ammann emphasizes Viola's unique contributions to video as an
art form: 'Whatever video may be, Bill Viola has given the medium its
dignity, just as painters once promoted perspective or others -- one thinks
of Seurat -- conferred autonomy on color' (19). The introduction closes by
highlighting three themes in Viola's work: excursus, proportion or balance,
and transition.
In contrast to Ammann's selection of key themes that I might perhaps call
formal in their conceptualization, I will focus here on other topics from
the book. Viola, a reflective and widely read artist, discusses any number
of issues here, but I shall group his thoughts around the following themes:
mysticism; the nature of perception; how to understand art; and finally,
the history and particular nature of video art.
Mysticism
Viola expresses not just trendy engagement with writers like the Persian
Sufi mystic Rumi (Madonna's reported recent enthusiasm), but a serious
intellectual and spiritual engagement spanning a number of years. The
chronology at the back of the book reports that Viola has travelled
extensively in the East and has spent time in Java, Bali, Japan, the
Himalayas, and the Fiji Islands. He has studied both Zen and Tibetan
Buddhism and has filmed ceremonies of Hindu firewalkers. Viola was busy
acquiring global consciousness before it was fashionable to speak of
multiculturalism and the new global community. Though he emphasizes the
role played in this century by scholars like D. T. Suzuki and A. K.
Coomaraswamy, who made Eastern ideas available to the West, Viola also
stresses that East-West contact has always been a part of the tradition,
even of what is now known as classical Europe.
Viola returned home to the West from his sojourns East with a new sense of
the continuing interactions among cultures and with a greater interest in
the mystical traditions of the West, primarily within Christianity. He
offers interesting observations about differences between the Christian
conception of the 'via negativa' and the methods or approaches of other
mystical traditions, and even writes knowledgeably about comparisons
between European and American mystics. He is conversant with not only Rumi,
Suzuki, and Coomaraswamy, but also cites Blake, Rilke, Julian Jaynes,
Eliade, Cambell, Jung, _The Cloud of Unknowing_, and, of course, 'St John
of the Cross' -- a poem which Viola quotes in full (117).
What does Viola take from this mystical engagement to use in his art? He
cites Rumi's advice from back in 1273: 'New organs of perception come into
being as a result of necessity -- therefore, increase your necessity so
that you may increase your perception' (71). From this Viola infers that a
technology like video is not an end in itself because: 'The level of use of
the tools is a direct reflection of the level of the user' (71). The real
goal is enhanced perception, something that will convey a sense of 'the
sacred as an element in the structure of consciousness' (here he quotes
Mircea Eliade, 174). He faults most of his fellow video artists for putting
the means before the end: 'Attending the countless conferences,
demonstrations, and video expos can only convince one that the technology
is far ahead of the people using it' (70).
Perception
Viola's emphasis on video as a 'new organ of perception' leads directly
into my second topic. Perception itself, within the kind of mystical
outlook adopted by this artist, is not simply an awareness or recording of
the external world. But neither does Viola use the camera as just one more
alternative to traditional artistic media, which in the West have mainly
served ends of realistic representation or self-expression. Instead, when
Viola describes video as a means of perceiving the world, he aims at
achieving an unusually active and transformative sort of vision, one that
places consciousness 'out there', or melds it into the world seamlessly
(it's no surprise that he was anticipating virtual reality technologies
back in 1981). Viola assimilates the camera's viewpoint to that of the
conscious perceiver: 'I have been interested in how we can move this point
of consciousness over and through our bodies and out over the things of the
world . . . I want to make my camera become the air itself. To become the
substance of time and the mind.' (148)
This use of video technology as a means to expand consciousness also leads
Viola to emphasize the role of sound in both video and in our mental life
in general. He examines spatial conceptions and metaphors for consciousness
and the mind. He is also very intrigued by the phenomenon of synaesthesia
and discusses the Russian psychologist Luria's famous case of patient known
as 'S' (168). Our own consciousness includes an interweaving of many forms
of sensory experience with 'neural processing, memory, imagination, and all
the mental events of the moment' (151). In recognition of the role played
by acoustic properties in conveying the elevated nature of sacred spaces,
Viola has studied sound and reverberations in Renaissance religious
edifices, medieval cathedrals, and classical Greek theatres. He made
acoustic records (rather than visual sketches) of the Duomo and most other
significant religious buildings in Florence (241).
The role of sound is so crucial to video that Viola emphasizes video's
origins from sound recording technology rather than, as was the case for
film, from photography. (We shall hear more on the aesthetic consequences
of this differential derivation a bit further below.) Because he thinks of
the senses as unified, Viola rejects the label 'video artist' (151). Sound
plays a major role in most of his video installations, for example the
raging storm of 'Room for St John of the Cross', the relentless voiceovers
of 'Slowly Turning Narrative' (1992), the whispers of 'The Stopping Mind'
(1991), or the scream of the girl in 'Anthem' (1983).
It might seem paradoxical, in light of Viola's conception of video as
another mode of sensory experience, that he rejects the realism of most
traditional Western imagery; and he certainly does not believe there is any
inherent realism in video. Rather, he is interested in linking his work to
sacred symbolic images, especially ones from other cultures, that embody or
realize the states of the inner mind, e.g. mandalas or Zen perfect circles
(85). 'I am interested not so much in the image whose source lies in the
phenomenal world, but rather the image as artifact, or result, or imprint,
or even wholly determined by some inner realization' (85). His videos are
images that are neither self-expressions nor images of the world. They
somehow convey conscious and perceptual states that are in but not of the
world.
The Nature of Art
In keeping with his interest in mysticism and in artistic consciousness as
a means of projecting mind out into the world, Viola sees the role of art
differently from that of traditional (at least since the Renaissance)
Western painting. He contrasts the Albertian notion of a painting -- as a
window through which the viewer looks at the image of a world -- to the
religious icon, which calls the viewer straight into the divine image. He
also contrasts the nature and values of Asian vs Western art on these same
topics (103, 105, 198-202), quoting from Coomaraswamy again: 'Modern
European art endeavors to represent things as they are in themselves,
Asiatic and Christian art to represent things more nearly as they are in
God, or nearer their source' (199). Ironically perhaps, getting nearer to
'God' or 'the source' means eliminating the God-like role of the artist as
creator/originator. Because of his interest in the physical processes of
perception, Viola also insists on the value of Structuralism -- though he
recognizes it is out of fashion in the art world and thinks that it must be
altogether reconceived (103). New structures or codes for organizing
perceptual experiences might, for example, be computer-generated by random
selection of patterns from information on a video disc (105-6). This, he
says, would enable the realization of multiple possibilities rather than
forcing the artist's vision onto the material from a selective 'edit'.
Viola thinks that the demands made by much contemporary art, including
video art, are both too low and too high. Too low because, as he puts it,
'so much video art underestimates the level of visual literacy of the
audience' (69). Too high because the art world has not done a good job at
presenting itself to the general public.
On the first point, Viola argues that artist should confront people with
low or ambiguous information because people learn from what they don't
understand. Hence he thinks it is fine if people, when confronted with
video art, are utterly confused. Viewers nowadays (like my MTV-students)
often see all forms of culture as entertainment and seek immediate surface
thrills (170). To look for the meaning takes time and attention, and at the
same time, can lead one astray; Viola quotes Magritte who said that if you
look for meanings, you can lose the poetry and mystery of the image (171).
But on the second point, about art asking too much of viewers, Viola argues
that artists do have a responsibility for making their work less
inaccessible and framing it in ways that the public can appreciate. He
often puts this in terms of explaining to his mother what he was doing
(her death was extremely significant to him and was something that he
filmed, in juxtaposition to the birth of his son; see 169, 182). He even
endorses the potentially Philistine route of interpreting and explaining
art by the first step of explaining it's costs; he thinks this might help
explain what all the fuss is about (169). In more recent essays he
discusses the art world and the vagaries of critical study and reception,
mentioning diverse writers from Clement Greenberg to Jean Baudrillard, and
he also gives his take on the notorious NEA controversies (177-8). On this
last point, writing in 1990, he said (unpopularly no doubt to his
colleagues), that artists bear some responsibility for the problems because
they are out of touch with what people are thinking. He even accuses
artists of being arrogant if they assume that the artworld has some kind of
monopoly on creativity.
This may seem not to mesh so well with his somewhat esoteric and demanding
work. Viola wants to be both a uniquely attentive perceiver and a populist
who sees himself as having much in common with 'Sunday painters in the
park'. To dispel the air of paradox here, he claims that artists are not
more creative than other people, but they represent an area of
specialization, like certain categories of physicists. Artists are certain
sorts of knowledge seekers: 'I consider art to be a branch of knowledge,
not a function of pleasure', he writes (182); or again, 'the twentieth
century artist is not necessarily someone who draws well, but someone who
thinks well' (64). At any rate, it is hard not to applaud him when he
speaks (in 1988) of the need to reestablish 'the broken link between art
and the public, the restoration of art to a functional place in people's
lives' (169).
Video Art
For many readers Viola's specific comments on the history of video art and
his reflections on the nature of the medium will be the most interesting
part of this book. Viola draws strong contrasts between video and film. He
treats the fact that film came out of photography, while video came out of
audio recording, as very significant, as mentioned above. Also relevant is
that video is somehow more 'live' than film. Viola puts this by saying that
video is 'videoing' all the time; film isn't filming unless it's recording
(62); he thinks this means that video has more roots in the live, and that
its relation to time is more important (even though time is a basic
material of both film and video, 230). Not only does he discuss the
material nature of each sort of imaging technology, but he remarks in
detail on the evolution of video technology, discussing the role of editing
technologies and the distinctive video realizations of such features as
montage, cuts, zooms, the frame, etc.
Viola sees the task of video artist as deciding primarily what not to
record -- as carving away vs building up. (Anyone with a video camera-crazy
relative knows there is a big problem in sorting out, or as he he puts it,
distinguishing information vs garbage.) Viola once tried to record non-stop
for days and then realized no one would ever want to watch or edit what he
had gotten onto tape. Here he alludes to another strange mishmash of
influences: Henri Bergson's ideas of filtering out meaning from the
infinity of experience, as well as to Eastern vs Western forms of music,
and the work of William Blake, Sufi mystics, and particle physicists (61).
There is also a valuable recounting of the history of video art here,
written at a significant ten-year marker of the medium's use as art, in
1984. Viola describes the origins of early video art, identifying two key
strands, a group approach stemming mainly from communications technology
types, and an individualistic approach reflecting more established
art-world types. This history is informed by awareness of theorists whose
work was also important (he mentions Aldous Huxley, William Burroughs,
Hollis Frampton, Marshall McLuhan, and more) as well as by a variety of key
artists and exhibitions.
Weaknesses
_Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House_ is an interesting book for all the
reasons mentioned above, but it is not without its flaws. For someone like
myself with a low 'mysticism quotient', the persistent evocations of
grandiose notions of Being will be hard to take. Similarly, some of the
excerpts from Viola's journals seem sketchy and sophomoric; it is almost
embarrassing that they appear to be reaching so hard for the profound --
e.g. 'Vision as reception/Vision as reflection/Vision as projection' (146);
or 'No beginning/No end/No direction/No duration/Video as mind' (78). The
book could have used some editing to cull it and avert unfortunate
repetitions (the somewhat amusing story of Viola's late-night encounter
with a dancing porcupine on a mountain road appears no fewer than three
times in almost the same wording).
Similarly, many of the drawings do not seem to add much. Not only is Viola
not Michelangelo, but some of the sketches are almost unintelligible and
don't do that much as a record of his artistic process. It is difficult to
reconstruct the video installations in particular from any of the drawings
here. The sketches, however, can be rather amusing. Some of them recalled
to me the often primitive efforts of philosophy professors (including
myself) to draw such things as ancient Greek theories of vision -- like
Empedocles's view of 'visual rays' (see 147) -- or even to chart the
unchartable -- like Kant's transcendental unity of apperception (see 83).
Perhaps what is most disappointing about the artist's reflections are that
his ruminations on perception, consciousness, and technology do not really
seem up-to-date. The book is not quite recent enough for Viola to take us
up into the digital age. Viola has long used computers to organize video
displays but he does not seem to have become interested in the new digital
media as such, or in the new fusions between video, film, animation, and
digitized imagery. His comments on the implications of technology at one or
two points seem to have anticipated both the World Wide Web and virtual
reality, but he does not meditate on either phenomenon at any length. Even
the few years since the book's original publication date (1995) have seen
such rapid progress in both arenas that the artist's thoughts on these
newly evolving organs of perception would surely be interesting to hear.
University of Houston, Texas, USA
May 1999
Copyright © _Film-Philosophy_ 1999
Cynthia A. Freeland, 'Bill Viola and the Video Sublime', _Film-Philosophy_,
vol. 3 no. 28, July 1999
<http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy/files/freeland.html>.
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