Eminent American video artist, Bill Viola invests his hypnotic decelerated images with a humanist poetry which more often has been the subject of video's critique. He talks here with Nicholas Zurbrugg about the philosophical, political and spiritual potential of video, about his experiments with the 'palette of time' and narrative speed, about myth, the classical, and television.
Nicholas Zurbrugg Could I begin by asking you how you would define your particular practice, or what your distinctive priorities are as an artist?
Bill Viola Well, I think it is giving other people the possibility to experience things that I have experienced––revelations––in one way or another. I'm not speaking necessarily in religious terms, but just in terms of moments when one is confronted with a physical situation which causes one to see things in a different way, to think about something in a different way, to have some turning over of the familiar and the commonplace and, in the process, possibly revealing something a little bit deeper, broader or wider.
And I found that this thing called the camera––the video camera––and the screen, and the monitor can do that by their nature, because they give you the world back, but in the process of doing so––because it's not your own experience, but rather this kind of mechanical art––it can give you new points of view and new insights in a very simple way, a very direct way.
The clearest example I can think of is a piece that I did in 1976 called He Weeps For You, which is a drop of water that's magnified by a camera with a special close-up lens. What's going on is something which I... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline