Fire Woman

The Voyage

The fourth video in the five-part digital-image cycle project "Going Forth By Day" (2002), "The Voyage" features an elderly man who is dying, surrounded by his family, as a boat below filled with his possessions awaits him.

Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall)

The ascent of the soul in the space after death as it is awakened and drawn up in a backwards flowing waterfall.

I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like

"I Do Not Know What It Is that I Am Like" juxtaposes images of animals, both wild and domestic, and natural environments with human activity as it takes place in an apartment, and during a fire walking ceremony in Fiji. Documentary-style footage is combined with staged events. Despite the piece's lack of a traditional narrative, it bears some relationship to nature works. The segment features material from "Il Corpo Scuro (The dark body)" - animals and natural environments are seen up close and at a distance.

Déserts

Déserts was created to accompany a live performance of the work of avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse (1885-1965). The Ensemble Modern, a contemporary music group based in Frankfurt, commissioned Viola to create a visual score for Varèse's Déserts after discovering notes by the composer referring to an unrealized image component of his composition. The resulting film/videotape was produced with the European television stations ZDF/Arte. In October 1994 Viola's Déserts premiered in a live performance in Vienna with conductor Peter Eötvös and the Ensemble Modern.

Ocean Without a Shore

Offering a series of encounters at the intersection between life and death, the work documents a succession of people slowly emerging out of darkness and moving into the light, where Viola's figures are like those of a modern day Orpheus.

The Passing

Internationally acclaimed and award-winning video installation artist Bill Viola juxtaposes personal pictures of his mother's death with images of his own son's birth to explore foundational and potent themes of beginnings and endings, the cycle of life and the movement of generations. An evocative exploration of personal and communal spirituality, this deeply felt film is a poetic masterpiece to contemplate time and again.

The Reflecting Pool

Viola's seminal piece, The Reflecting Pool, was made three decades ago on analogue video tape and yet could easily pass for a contemporary digital piece; in it, Viola emerges as central protagonist from a thick forest into a clearing filled by an artificial pool. As the noise of an aeroplane slowly passes and fades overhead, Viola approaches the edge of the pool, whereby he removes his shoes, squats down yelling and then prepares to make a powerful jump.

Going Forth By Day

The film is a five-part projection-based installation, which addresses the complexity of human existence through the themes of individuality, society, death and rebirth. Each video is projected directly onto the wall of the exhibition space, just as paint from a fresco adheres to the surface of a plaster wall.

Eternal Return

Video on two flat-screen monitors with sound

The Dreamers

Seven vertically mounted screens show seven fully clothed submerged people of different ages, genders and ethnicities floating beneath the surface of a river or lake.

The Semi-Circular Canals

The title of The Semi-Circular Canals refers to the portion of the human ear that regulates balance. Viola constructed a platform on which he and the recording equipment counterbalanced one another, while freely suspended from a large tree. The artist appears to be sitting calmly at the center of the universe as the earth rotates. He writes, "The tape was inspired by NASA films and develops references to cosmological cycles, with the individual at the rotational center of their universe."

Inverted Birth

American video artist Bill Viola explores the life cycle as an enveloping whole instead of the hegemonic view of life as a linear progression. The artist considers human beings' existence on earth as a cycle where the beginning and end may be the same. Projected onto a screen more than seven meters high anchored to the floor, "Inverted Birth" depicts five stages of human awakening through a series of violent transformations.

Basin of Tears

In Basin of Tears, two videos are projected side by side on two adjacent screens mounted to the wall. This video diptych creates an incredible imagery, colours and the sensual quality of water are presented vividly, just like in an old master painting. Viewers find themselves in a transcendental atmosphere; through the slow pace, the large but still intimate size and the exclusion of any sound, Viola creates a truly fascinating artwork with a powerful visual effect. It seeks to engage the viewer in a visceral and emotional experience that goes to the roots of the human condition and its spiritual sources.

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde

Motivated by the love that bound him to Mathilda Wesendonck, Richard Wagner’s composition of Tristan und Isolde goes far beyond any simple operatic gesture. Peter Sellars’ production pours oil onto this troubled sea of emotions in an almost dematerialised setting bared of all earthly contingencies whilst Bill Viola presents the lovers’ initiatory quest for nirvana in videos detached from the stage, suspended like altarpieces.

The Tristan Project

A four-hour plus video production inspired by Richard Wagner's oeuvre "Tristan und Isolde" and projected during the opera premiere in Paris, in partnership with Peter Sellars as artistic collaborator, and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Surrender

Installation on two screens where the two characters burst into tears, gradually lowering their heads until their faces touch the water.