Bill Viola Interview: Cameras are Keepers of the Souls

I was a very shy and introverted child the world in my mind and heart and body was more real than the immediate world around me of my family my school my friends and I would I mean I would go home sometimes after school when I was young and I would tell my friends that I had to go shopping with my mother and I would go to my room and just draw all afternoon you know and I would always that that was my nature it still is really today because the main the main place I make my art is my study where I have all my books my library and I have tables that I could draw on and and I have my notebooks that I can write I keep I keep a constant dialogue with myself since I've been probably oh I don't know maybe 12 years old and that's for me that's the center of my work when did you find out that images play an important role in your life when I fell into a lake when I was six years old and I fell to the bottom and I saw probably the most beautiful world I've ever seen and it was colorful and there was light and and these plants were moving I mean I see it regularly I see it constantly almost in my mind in my mind's eye it was a kind of paradise and so I I just felt that was the real world you know wasn't it was just a I was very lucky because I didn't die my uncle saved me but what happened was I was shown just by this accident that that this there's more than just the surface of life that one that the real thing is under the surface actually you know I forgot about that experience as I got older I mean I was only six years old so six years old there is a huge already a huge amount of things in your life and and each month practically you're getting more information more knowledge about what's around you and so it's it's huge input of data you know biological emotional spiritual of data so that that really you just I almost forgot about it and then I was doing an interview one day not unlike this one and that was probably I want to say when I was I'd say I would have been in my 30s early 30s and this interviewer was asking me about my childhood and I told him that story of the water and and then he said to me oh he said maybe that's why he is water in your work of course you know I didn't even think about that but I was always doing something with water and I think also video itself I remember writing in my notebook once it's it's like a kind of electronic water you know it's it's flowing electrons flow in circus right now this camera here is filled with electrical currents and it can be measured the way you measure you know plumbing in your house in water it's a fluid and and of course then the brain and your body becomes also connected with electricity we're speaking now and I'm gesturing with my hands because the electric waves that are in my body coming from the pumping of my heart and stuff are allowing me to to move them you know because it's all flowing electrons flow their fluid and they actually move and and they you know and the synapses in our brain are firing there's a gap you know between every single little neuron in our brain there's a gap of empty space so I think that's really really important you know and and the Buddhist masters have known this for a long time I mean emptiness our Zen teacher in Japan when we lived in Japan would always talk about emptiness and I didn't understand really what he was saying I said well okay maybe because in the temples it's very quiet and the room is empty and then you realize they're talking about a real thing the real thing that exists that that is the space between all the physical objects you know and that's where we exist really more we don't exist in the physical objects we look at them we see what they are but we really exist in in between the empty spaces in in reality how come you were attracted to through the moving image after drawing for some years what happened I discovered video 1969 someone in our high school brought a video camera one of the first ones they were called porta PACs they were the tape you know was a tape machine you had to thread it and and it was weighed thirty-five pounds so I was hit very heavy and then the camera wait about ten pounds and you put on shoulder and you walked around with this thing looking through this little very primitive eyepiece and I took one look into that yeah I went to a workshop in my University finally but this was actually high school first when they showed us this camera and I had never seen this before and he came and set it up this man came into our classroom set it up I looked at it and he pushed this button in this plastic box all of a sudden light appeared you know and it was this blue light it wasn't just white it was blue and I looked at that I thought you know that was that was what I remembered from the water that was the water coming back to me in the form of electrons in a physical object and it was really profound I mean it was very moving I felt like I almost got nervous I remember shaking almost after they turned it off and then that was the end of my high school year so we had the summer vacation and then we went I went to university Syracuse the first thing I did when I got there was I looked in the exist of you know extra things you could do on the campus and one of the things was video workshop and I went right there what was the first actually video work that you did well there were two to two steps to that one was I I was very friendly with this girl I knew and we both kind of took this video class I met her in the class and then we she was really into horses and once since we were in Syracuse New York it's not a big city like Manhattan so you're in you can very quickly go out to the countryside and so we went out to the countryside with this camera and started shooting horses in you know just natural things but but kind of zooming in a little bit and making it a little more abstract and then the I forget the name of this group there were these really really incredible stallions that were touring from Germany somewhere Lipizzaner stallions I think and they did this whole thing in a kind of arena and so we went there with the camera and we shot that so we had horses just out of nature and then these horses in a kind of show you know as a kind of a comparison that was really the first piece that I made and then the second piece I made which I think is more important was just by myself and I brought this camera into we had in our University in the Student Center we had this kind of open area where people could dance they did dance performances they showed films and so on so there was a dressing room in the back where the people then the dance stuff could you know sit in from the mirror so I got the camera I brought it inside this room it's a very small room I put on a tripod I pointed it at the mirror and the door to come in was exactly behind and I sat in front of mirror and I went out of the room I turn on the camera went out of the room waited then I had the keys I opened the door with the key closed the door and you see this person walking towards you and then suddenly he kind of walks inside you and turns around and you see the direct view not the reflection in the glass and you don't even know [Music] it was called a tape I and I not just a roman number i but tape i like myself it was a kind of a piece about going inside myself and then the whole point of it was to hold back a scream as long as possible before you release it which ended up in this piece being ten minutes and then when the scream was it was really you know it's like you're holding it just like this massive sound and then I stood up put my finger on the tape because again this was the older machines you could actually see the tape going and I just pushed it until it stopped and then the image just and that was I think probably my one of my most successful pieces to this day I think I was a very important piece and it just immediately set the stage for me for working with this idea of self-knowledge in terms of the ancient world but also in terms of ourselves and this idea of reflection and which is also found in water obviously so it was a very seminal work to make it's not been shown that much actually that piece actually it was another kind of wonderful accident I was walking home to my studio I lived in a kind of a really rundown area of New York I didn't have much money and there was this very small kind of apartment I got on the ground floor and I was coming home from seeing some friends and it was raining it started to rain so I was trying to get home before I could get too wet and the raindrops came and they landed on my glasses because I wore glasses since I was young and and what happened was each each raindrop I it was hard to see so I took my glasses off okay and I was going to clean them and at that moment a car went by and right here not out in the street right here was in in these little drops I saw like 15 little cars because each one I it took me a while to realize it but each one was a lens of refractive lens that the water drop had contained and this to me was like when I was a kid it was a miracle I was just I couldn't believe what I was seeing and so I got so excited and I went home and I tried to reproduce it on my sink you know with the water dripping and it wasn't wasn't that good and I got my camera and so the next day I went out and I got a aquarium tube you know these plastic tubes and put it in a put water a water container on top of it and had it dripped down and I was and I got a velvet you use for the fish tanks and I could just control the drop at a very even slow pace and that piece became he weeps for you which has a drop of water and you come in a big room and there's a big projection and you see this drop of water and you realize there's a face in it you don't know what it is and then it lands on a drum and it makes a sound so you could actually understand that this small little drop this big was being projected huge on the wall and the sound that was created by that was being felt in your BA and that was a was one of my first installation pieces that I think was really again that's another really important work for me one of the most magical unconscious [Music] things and it was actually one of the times when I really understood what I needed myself not something some professor told me when I was in school or something I've read in a book and it was when I made the peace room for st. John of the Cross since I was in university I was reading Islamic mystics Christian mystics Buddhist mystics in all these traditions so that was really my guide and I never told any of my friends really about it it was my own very private thing and I didn't want to tell them because you know you're still in this mode you've just come out of school and you you have all the theories and you've been taught all of that stuff and you've been taught the technique so so that was great but I just felt that that was my own kind of private secret that in the midst of all of this these art theories and all the stuff that we're learning which still goes on today somehow under there I took this other path on my own like underground I began reading all of these Islamic mystics particularly and then I kind of transferred that to Buddhism and then to Christianity and that's was my core and so when I came across Saint John of the Cross that was really really profound that that really just grabbed me but it also frightened me you know it was a very very honest way of looking at yourself and I started to write down his poems by hand and some of them are so extraordinary they're all about he was a you know 16th century mystic and he was imprisoned by the Inquisition he was tortured like in Abu Ghraib prison today and you know his horrible situation he was taken out he lived he was forced to stay in a little room that was not even high to stand up and you couldn't even lie down cold in the winter and hot in the summer and he was taken out once a day and whipped so he had a he had a disfigured back because of that in the end and then some of his friends managed to miraculously get him a rope and hide it and and get him out through the window you know just like with the sheets going down you know like in the movies and then running away and then he stayed the rest of his life you know out in the countryside you know and I think the thing that was really the most profound for me was the whole time he was in that horrible position which exists again right now today these people being tortured all over the world he was in that horrible position he when he got out he had no anger with any of the people that held him there and his he had a friend was a guy a guard he made friends with one of the guards and he gave him some paper so he could write down these poems that he was making in his mind and we still have those poems there are books and that's what I read I found a poem of Saint John of the Cross I didn't really know him very well I opened up the first page and I was like in tears immediately about this story of this guy and so it was really a big turning point for me because when the work was finished I decided to call the work room for Saint John of the Cross all my other pieces had been well he weeps for you I suppose as although has a little bit of a connection with with that kind of world the spiritual world but for the most part my works were all titled and you know very you know normal ways that one would title art works and you know they're a little unusual maybe slightly poetic but but this thing when I reached it I I reached a crossroads in my life and I was remember sitting on my desk and was the day before I had to have the the piece ready and I all I had to do was come up with a title and I had like 50 times so this paper I just kept writing everything and I don't know what happened maybe I got really tired but I was there writing I remember it was late at night and I just was and I had all these names and finally something a voice back here said why don't you just call it what it is room for st. John of the Cross and I wrote that down and sent off the letter to the guys who were gonna you know do the show and man I mean some of the critics just went crazy you know because I'm here I was like a contemporary artist you know and I'm making a piece of better about a Catholic saint you know in the Middle Ages and oh man and you know what I realized in the end I realized that was a moment when I took my stand I just said I'm gonna say what this really is what it really means for me because you're very shy when you get out of art school there's a lot of big figures you have these big mountain ranges all these great artists around you you how can I go there so you're kind of really have to guard yourself a little bit and how you can find your way through and everything and so I just said this thing I felt like I felt liberated I wasn't afraid anymore that someone would you know tell me I can't do that that's terrible you know and then I never looked back at that point it was a huge change in my life it's really you another thing that I never did was I never wanted to when we when home video started in the 70s and then into the 80s with beta Betamax and VHS and stuff I I never wanted to bring my family videos into my studio those two things were steak stay apart so what happened was my mother died and this was totally unexpected and it was she passed away in in 1981 and she was three months in a coma and then she just died and I was with her holding her hand when just left her body and my brother was on the other side of the bed my father had been in the room until late that night and then he just went home and we said well we'll stay with mom and then we didn't know she was gonna die and then she died when we were both holding her hands and was like a most extraordinary thing I've ever seen in my life at any moment ever it was just profoundly beautiful profoundly sad and mysterious beyond belief I mean you couldn't believe what you were seeing I mean how how is this possible this person is breathing living talking like we are right now and then they become just nothing you know what was on the bed when we looked back my brother and I because he was looking up in the air I thought that was interesting he's a pretty straight guy I was the one who should be looking up at here but I was just I don't know what I was looking at and then then I looked down and whatever was on the bed was not my mother I don't know it's just something you know I was like okay a bunch of laundry or something just had her stone it was nothing it was just really amazing it was so profound and that was that was probably the one of the greatest teachings I ever had about the end about this median because these machines we have right now that we're recording this thing on they are keepers of the souls they capture souls they hold souls and you're gonna be able to play this thing back if you want if you take care of it technically you're gonna be able to play this thing back five ten twenty fifty a hundred years from now because this this medium will continue to evolve and will be gone and so that was a very very essential thing to understand a very essential thing to understand about this medium this medium has a life and it holds lives and it's not the Ritz not the actual person but it holds it well enough to understand that like a photograph that we have some feeling so the feelings don't don't die you know they don't die they don't go away they're here right now that was probably the best gift I'd ever had from anything like that you know and so then you make you know the first thing I did as I made non triptych and that was probably one of the best pieces I've ever made and the reason was I was trying to understand what I had seen what I experienced I'd never even contemplate anything like that besides the sorrow of it you knows more than that so I just was I said there's a part of the law of the world that has opened up for me that I never knew really existed and I wanted to explore that and then I was able to really explore it when my father died in 1999 and and when I made the passion series was all about tears and suffering and crying you know and then it became much more real and I could really understand it a lot better you know you said that the video was your lifeline to the world at that time yeah could you describe what do you mean by that well what I did the big breakthrough I've only had three or four maybe five maximum breakthroughs in my life real true breakthroughs and when my mother passed away for the first time in my life I and I was first of all I took three months off you know German television was screaming at me and I had infinitum television like a year and a half earlier I think almost two years before that and they were really you know saying you better you have to make this peace you know you know you we've given you the money we're gonna take back the money so it's all this all this stress but I just for the first time in order to try to complete the piece for German television I brought my home movies that were on my shelf in my bedroom I brought them into my studio where and of course to his air-conditioning in there so I wanted to keep them but now this was please were precious this wasn't just your nice going to the zoo with your family this is my mother and she is not on this earth anymore and she'll never breathe again she'll never look at you with those she won't look at you with his eyes again and you know it's just gone like air it was unbelievable so I thought oh my god I've got it so I brought these things in I put him up on the shelf and and then also included in that was this footage I took in the hospital of her which I didn't even intend to use for anything but I needed to see her last moments which I didn't shoot her when she died that was the day after but she was on her way out so I just put those on the shelf you know they were there and then in the course of trying to finish this thing I had they gave me three months and that was it so yeah you know about the second month like one day you know I was having a cup of tea and there was the shelf with the stuff of my family but then within that there's the right-hand shelf down is the death tapes you know and so I pull this thing off and I put it in my machine you know and I was like first I cried like a baby but then I started doing it every morning like the kind of Prayer and it was unbelievable it was like she was there she wasn't there and then I realized all of a sudden that my life my family going to the zoo playing football with my kids go to the beach is equal to making a piece for the guru 9 yeah you know it was like why the hell did I not see that if you're going to make true art you have to make it it's got to be one thing it's got to be one thing you can't be like you know mr. famous artist here and then something else over there and you can't keep those things apart if you want to live your life to the fullest you you

Channel: Louisiana Channel

Views: 162,918

Keywords: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum, art, Bill Viola, video art, video artist

Id: w3VfWLlkuRI

Length: 28min 9sec (1689 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 16 2019