Avant Garde Film & Video Analysis:
Bill Viola, “Select Works”
Bill Viola’s “Select Works” is a portrait of “the invisible;” and the artist claims in his interview “technology gives to us the ability to represent invisible things.” Bill Viola also expresses that his camera seeks out things that we cannot see, taking an abstract path, and making us aware about the world around us 1. For me, this statement perfectly describes life, and I have a particular appreciation for Bill Viola’s images as a result, but also because of his simulacrums, mirages, reflexes, and how he uses time in his work. His videos are about time and space, and about the invisible rhythm of life. “Select Works” includes: Migration- for Jack Nelson (1976), The Reflecting Pool, Ancient of Days (1980), and Chott el-DJERID, a portrait in light and heat (1980).
The first image of the video “Migration – for Jack Nelson” is a compound of yellow, red and green stripes with the sound of water dropping in electronic reverberation that also sounds like a Buddhist’s bell. The sound is continuous and repeats itself in intervals, marking the time. The form of the stripes changes with some variations in color, and the camera changes the focus until the stripes disappear and we realize that is a table and a shadow of a man sitting at the table entering in the frame. The seated man is part of a frame composition along with the pipe, table, and bowl. The camera approaches the table with editing in dissolve (fading), and we see some dark mixed green and red colors like baroque paintings. Then we see the items on the table: a corn flakes box, two oranges and one bowl when the water drops, and the sound becomes diegetic. The composition of colors it keeps is a mix of yellow, green and red. The editing is done in short juxtapositions (fade in) on the table until we see the man’s face reflected in the water bowl. The sound has some variations, but it is almost imperceptible, and also is not synchronized with the drops (sometimes we hear two consecutive drops as result of an echo, for example). The montage in dissolve zooms in on the pipe that is posted in the top of the bowl, detailing the drop increasingly more closely until we see the man’s face reflected in the drop with an intense red background. The video has a space-temporal relationship marked with a rhythmic effect of the water dropping, paying attention to the continuous movement of the drop and to the big close up detailing the face reflected in it. The sound and image are not synchronized, sometimes diegetic, sometimes non-diegetic, but there is a meaningful connection between them, presenting the variation of time marked for a sound that seems to be the same, but is not. The video artist presents the colors as an intense subject with mood lighting. What is intriguing is that the seated man is not a character, but is a kind of background object. He does not exist outside of the water reflected because we only see part of his static body, for example. We can say that the man is a simulacrum of man, and the reflection of his face can represent the intense forces of life, marking the point when we can see Bill Viola’s invisible, virtual image.
The video artist once again insists on the fluid, and “The Reflecting Pool” also works with the virtual image and with double spaces, real and virtual. This time the object is not a table composition, but is a surface of a “swimming” pool in a forest. The time is pointed and extended by a series of events seen only as reflection. The sound is disconnected with the images: we hear an accelerating engine that could be a car, then the sound of a plane, and then flowing water. The sound of one strong respiration or grunt is then heard. We see the man, the nature and the water, and we can say that the body may represent the insertion of the artist in relation with nature and his oeuvre that is represented by the liquid screen of the reflecting pool. This is a conceptual video montage that makes a relationship between those two different spaces and times, but it is also the world of dreams. We have two different times and two different spaces: inside and outside of the pool. We also have the question of materiality presented in those different spaces, and the reflexes and ripples of the water limit the movement to themselves. The jump freeze frame shot forces the viewer’s eyes towards the movement of the water, losing the jumper in the path of leaves because for a moment we do not know if he is there or has disappeared, for example, asking ourselves if the man is part of nature or is immersed in the pool. We also can say that the water is a “contemplation of nature itself” (Grenier), showing its variations. Nearly everything in the frame is green, and the reflected pool shows the different time of the day of the forest, and the color inside of the pool changes showing the extension of the time of the reflected images, also showing the mirage of the man in this deep, dark and mysterious space. We can say that the action is not real, we have the man who jumps, but his movement is somehow interrupted. We see a naked man coming out of the water and going back to the forest that could symbolize “a rebirth” (Grenier). The video is an opposite of the continuity of events, but is in constant variation of it. In addition, because the edges of the pool are not framed, somehow it makes the viewer feel that he or she is part of the reflecting pool. We can say that nature and the reflecting pool are directly connected to the viewer, who is then also connected to the artist and his oeuvre. In the beginning of the video, we pay attention to nature/reality, but that becomes secondary to the pool/virtual later on.
The first scene of the video “Ancient of Days” is a bonfire in the woods. The color is a heavy dark blue with a vivid red for the fire, making relation with cold and warm colors. The sound is a mix of city traffic, fire burning and wind. The image rewinds until we see the entire table before the fire, and a man making some woodwork. We see on the table a composition of a cup of tea; the man puts the clock in the top of the woodwork and leaves. We have the diegetic sound of clock and the non-diegetic sound of birds when the video cuts to the Park Monument sequence. The video artist disconnects sound from image (plane, traffic and people). The light changes, showing cuts of different days and different hours of the day in dissolves. The next sequence is a street of city traffic that also dissolves from one shot to another. The camera takes an aerial follow shot of the street traffic until the image canvas rotates 180 degrees making the city upside down when the light changes to night time. Next is the Mount Everest sequence when we see nature, a child playing with sticks and hear the song of a bird. The light changes, showing several hours of the day or several different days like the earlier sequences. We notice the sound of a plane, then the sound of traffic, and I believe that the sound crosses the sequences, layering time in the image. The Mount Everest color changes to a pale brown showing dots in the image. The camera zooms out until we see the street’s screening panel. We see a shot of a street in Japan, a bus stop, traffic and commerce, and the sound now is a kind of street radio station. The camera zooms in slow motion on people walking and the sound changes to distorted low notes. The image is frozen and the final sequence is a compound of a static shot of a table with a clock and vessel with jasmine flowers. In the left of the screen we see a frame hanging on the wall. This frame is actually a video clip of a changing landscape: color and light changes, showing that the time is also passing between several different days. The sound now is an ambient sound of people talking, accompanying the diegetic sound of the table clock until the hanged frame fades to black. This piece is all about passing time, and mixing different days and nights. Bill Viola likes marked time and extends it, but in this particular video he also mixes them up.
In the video “Chott el-DJERID, a portrait in light and heat,” Bill Viola explores the dimension of space; all the shots are master shots. The first image is a white screen, like a white canvas, with the sound of wind. First, we see a tree almost imperceptible in the middle of the fog. The camera zooms out until the tree disappears on the horizon. Then, we see cuts for different shots, always white, but now with some additional elements when the camera goes in and out on a couple of houses in the middle of the snow, then for a light pole. The image is like a mirage, it is not static, and not quite defined. The camera zooms out again and once more the screen is all white, and still in a fixed master shot. We see one small black point on the horizon until we realize that it is something moving towards us, a man walking. Bill Viola takes the time to show the man walking towards us, and then he cuts to the desert, editing different master shots of it. A man enters the frame and throws a rock to a small reddish puddle of water, cutting for a mirage of the Sahara desert landscapes, also in master shot. Then we see different images of the desert and we see a mirage of people, like simulacrums. The sound of wind and car’s engines in different intervals are not related with the images that we see in the frame. For example, when the mirage of a red car going in a lateral direction passes we just hear the sound of wind, then after the car exits the frame we hear the engine’s sound. The next shots are exactly the same: bus and two jeeps, postponing the sound in a desynchronized effect with the image. He cuts to a camel, then to a mirage of people and animals in a pastel color. The photograph is a mix of pastel colors, blue, yellow, green and some washed red. This piece is “a portrait in light and heat” because we have the white canvas represented by the snow shots, then some elements, and then the landscapes with different lights and the heat comes from the mirages. Bill Viola here presents his homage to nature, and as an artist, he “paints” a landscape of an electronic image from the snow to the desert. The artist transforms the coldness of a white shot or canvas to a warm one with images simulacrum of the Sahara desert.
In 1994, I had the opportunity to experience Bill Viola’s work in an installation exhibition in CCBB, Rio de Janeiro named “The Invisible Territory”, and there I became very intrigued with the sense of his video images and their purpose. Bill Viola was making high quality images with a conceptual thinking, and it was not cinema in the narrative way, showing that we can make something beautiful in video as well. In fact, Bill Viola went beyond beauty; he explores impressions and the frailty of life and its mystery, presenting elements such as darkness, light, body, landscape, and sound, and giving us, the viewers, all the impressions of time and space, especially when he marks time and extends it simultaneously. His virtual images, such as the water dropping, the reflecting pool and the reddish puddle in the desert represent the mystery of an unexpected and unknown world2. We can compare Bill Viola’s videos with painting, in the sense that he shows to us the same elements that paintings do: the invisible or the so called fourth dimension that “represents the immensity of space eternalizing itself in all directions at any given moment”3(p.224).
Eliane Lima, Binghamton University
State University of New York
Cinema BA
Notas
1 http://www.billviola.com/interviews.htm
2 See: “The Sang of Poet” by Jean Cocteau and “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There” by Lewis Carroll.
3 CHIPP, Herschel B. (1996). Theories of Modern Art. In Berkeley (Ed.), Guillaume Apollinaire, “The Beginning of Cubism” 1912 (pp.216-247). Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
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