Bill Viola: Slowly Turning Narrative
Bill Viola: Slowly Turning Narrative
Bill Viola, Slowly Turning Narrative, 1992
Slowly Turning Narrative
Bill Viola
United States, b. 1951
Slowly Turning Narrative, 1992
Edition 2 of 2
Two-channel video and sound installation with double-sided rotating screen, looped
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by the Modern and Contemporary
AC1995.146.1-.4
Bill Viola (b. 1951) is a pioneer in developing video as a major art medium. For more than forty years, he has made work that addresses life, death, and the intervening journey and is rooted in both Eastern and Western art and spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism. Born in New York City, Viola graduated in 1973 from the College of Visual and Performing Arts of Syracuse University, where he studied electronic music, performance art, and experimental film, and created his first videos using the recently-invented portable video camera/recorder. After graduating, Viola spent eighteen months working in Florence, surrounded by Renaissance art and architecture. Later, a fellowship allowed him—along with Kira Perov, his wife and collaborator—to live in Japan from 1980-81, studying Zen Buddhist philosophy and experiencing the architecture, calligraphy, Noh theater, and many other aspects of Japanese culture that have influenced his work. Viola then moved to Southern California, though extensive travels have taken him to destinations including the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, the deserts of Tunisia, Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, Hindu fire-walking ceremonies in Fiji, and Native American archaeological sites in the Southwestern United States. Viola represented the United States at the 1995 Venice Biennale; two years later a major survey of his work traveled internationally, including to LACMA. He currently lives in Long Beach.
Viola’s Slowly Turning Narrative, an immersive environment of image and sound, encompasses presence and absence, childhood and aging, creation and destruction, the many and the one. This presentation marks the first time the work is on view in this country in twenty years, and it is just as relevant now as a reminder of our shared humanity. In the artist’s own words, the work “is concerned with the enclosing nature of the self-image and potentially infinite (and therefore unattainable) states of being, all revolving around the still point of the central self. The room and all persons within it become a continually shifting projection screen, enclosing the image and its reflections, all locked into the regular cadences of the chanting voice and the rotating screen. The entire space becomes an interior for the revelations of a constantly turning mind absorbed with itself. The confluences and conflicts of image, intent, content, and emotion perpetually circulate as the screen slowly turns in the space.”
Artist Commentary
Listen to the artist talk about his work and influences.
Audio Transcript
[Narrator]
Bill Viola was one of the first artists to use video art and sound technologies in his work, starting in the early ʼ70s. Here is Bill Viola talking about his work in 2010, recorded at ACMI in Melbourne
[Bill Viola]
In the early days I was trying to figure out what this medium was and what it was capable of doing. So I was really trying to set up these very, almost like scientific, experiments to see exactly what would happen if I did such and such. A lot of it dealt with, of course, self reflection because this medium is more incredible and intense than even Narcissus. It has a way of reflecting ourselves to the world. That's what’s going on right now when you sit at your computer screens and you project yourself out into the world, whether it's through Twitter or Facebook or whatever, that you’re actually making vestiges of the self and you’re sending it out into the world.
[Narrator]
The artist has traveled extensively, and spent extended periods of time in Florence, Italy, a center of Renaissance art, and later in Japan, with his wife and collaborator, Kira Perov. He reflects on his first impressions of Japanese culture and the impact of his travels on him and his work.
[Bill Viola]
When Kira and I were in Japan where I was on a cultural exchange program in 1980/81—and that was an extraordinary spirit force, just to be in another culture, especially one as rich as Japan. Because the thing I really love about Japan is, Japan never experienced the Renaissance. They went directly from the Middle Ages right into the modern world, when Commodore Perry came with its gunships and in the great American way so rudely opened up Japan to foreign goods and things and connected it with the rest of the world. But for 250 years, they had been completely isolated and they were living in a medieval world. There were guys walking around with Samurai swords in the cities and stuff. So it was really a very special thing when you take out one of the major components of certainly Western culture, this kind of idea of progress and things, and you just suddenly go from the Middle Ages right to the modern world. So that really attracted us, I think, and taught me a lot about the nature of time and the nature of experience.
So I would walk around in the middle of Tokyo, one of the most contemporary places on the planet--I mean the architecture, everything is extraordinary--and right under the surface you just get the feeling that there is something else, there’s another deep, deep layer there. And that really fascinated me...it really fascinated me.
The artist’s commentary is sourced from the video documentation of Bill Viola talking with Rachael Kohn at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in conjunction with the 2010 Melbourne Festival.
This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
All exhibitions at LACMA are underwritten by the LACMA Exhibition Fund. Major annual support is provided by Kitzia and Richard Goodman and Meredith and David Kaplan, with generous annual funding from Terry and Lionel Bell, Kevin J. Chen, Louise and Brad Edgerton, Edgerton Foundation, Emily and Teddy Greenspan, Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross, Mary and Daniel James, David Lloyd and Kimberly Steward, Kelsey Lee Offield, Mr. and Mrs. Anthony and Lee Shaw, Lenore and Richard Wayne, Marietta Wu and Thomas Yamamoto, and The Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation.