Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) - Bill Viola and Kira Perov

so St Paul's unveils a new work of art a video installation a very 21st century medium in a ancient Cathedral and I'm delighted to be able to interview the creators of this work asking them about the meaning of the work but also why here in St Paul's Bill and Cara welcome it's been 11 years since this was first talked about how are you feeling uh I'm feeling like I'm 11 years older it's really really incredible to come this far and to see what we have produced here uh we are so excited uh it's an amazing situation back there we've just seen it and it's really really beautiful so that is something I think for both kir and I that is just really really very very special and very you feeling happy I'm actually really ecstatic I was actually quite numb when I first saw the piece because uh all of the activity leading up to it you know the editing was kind of almost down to the wire um but uh now I've had a chance to actually um visit with the piece a little bit and get to know it um uh it feels like it really really is meant for this location and martyrs why is martydom an important topic for a piece of work in a cathedral today well I think that's because the world uh is changing and uh it's a very very important you've seen all around the world this Discord this uh uh uh violence that we're seeing constantly um and we felt that really kind of honing in on that and understanding that from the inside because what you're seeing right here are not people who are standing out you know in a field or and in in other various circumstances that we can put them in we decided to do this from the point of view not from the viewer but from the internal space inside the person and that's where we wanted to angle and and connect and pinpoint the whole idea of of martyrdom in terms of our situation here and K demanding for the actors to do that um well very demanding um at the uh taking uh we had uh a reference of Bill's drawing of a number of years ago and a little description of of martydom and uh we had just finished production uh on other works and I'm thinking well now is the good time to do it I just felt that it needed to come out at this point and so we started working on it and it was very difficult to uh try to imagine how to represent Martyrs or martyrdom or sacrifice in a kind of a universal way and so uh we'd worked a lot with fire and water and I thought why don't we just use the elements and here these beautiful drawings of bills and so I thought well this one will be Earth this will more be air and then fire and then water and once we had worked with that a little bit we decided who was going to be representing these these uh these elements and so we used two people from um who had wrote before they are aerial artists and they had actually worked with s solle and place like that so they're very used to being tortured basically that's true we ended up torturing them quite a bit um so yes they had to be very strong and very um athletic but at the same time they both of these people have a fragile look about them that we really loved and working with them in the past uh the the person who did the fire we worked with him in in another work you could he's a beautiful African-American older actor who has uh a lot of strength inside of him so he was the fire and then the uh person who did Earth had to be very very malleable and to totally in charge of his body because he had to do the entire action backwards and then when we run it forward it looks like there's absolutely no backward motion at all so yes we had to have really people who who could work with Precision with sensitivity so Bill I mean you one of the great strengths of art is you can't paraphrase it but can you just describe the work a little bit as a whole as a whole well uh it kind of has three parts one is this uh image of people being left for dead uh in some horrible horrible place and then uh uh something happens inside them they're touched by something and they're not going to give up that's at that point that they realize so they start to push so the earth guy starts to get out of the predicament of this dirt poured all over him and the the uh woman who's uh our Air Marty is starting to feel this strong strong uh uh Whirlwind happening around her and again there's we just talked about Darrow the African-American artist he's he's he's actually sitting down the whole time and little drips of fire are starting to come down on him and of course it turns into a big configration and then the last one John Hay he's actually uh uh uh being crucified upside down if you will his whole body is is inverted compared to the other three and then um then what happens is he's slowly rising up with this Cascade of water coming down he's literally falling through a waterfall and he's like pushing himself up and he just goes out and up and the last thing you see are the people uh with a a very strong light coming down and it's now changed everybody looks really uh pale but in a in an act in a spiritual way and and you feel that going and then the last thing you see these little drips at the very end I think that the um the use of the elements the elements are a strong force in nature in fact it's they are the strongest force in nature you can't control a a wildfire you can't control a flood you can't control an earthquake and you can't control tornadoes and so that was the idea was to make it a a universal strong action of some kind and kind of represents in the strongest raging of these elements represents really the death the past Passage through death of each of these Mars they've you don't see any of the decisions the decisions have already been made that the sacrifice is going to happen there's no that's not part of the peace at all the peace is the resignation and the dignity and then finally the letting go and conquering actually these elements and finally St Paul has hundreds of thousands of people people of Faith people of no faith people who questioning and unsure what do you hope is going to be the effect on these people as they see this work and then and then go back through their schs well I would say just personally that that everyone here has something that they need to resolve something that they really need to um understand better and I think that's the the main Essence right here it doesn't matter what you denominational issues are around it's like this is a human thing and we're bringing it down to the human level uh and that's the most important thing I mean there's a lot of different cultures around that do things in a lot of different ways but un underneath all of that in the core of the human being throughout the entire Globe there's this place there's this inner place that is going to save you that's going to bring you in and teach you something even if it's going to hurt even if it's going to cause suffering at at the moment but in the end it will actually blossom into something uh extraordinary thank you very much you're welcome

Channel: St Paul's Cathedral

Views: 20,055

Keywords: Bill Viola (Visual Artist), Kira Perova, St Paul's Cathedral, Mark Oakley, St Pauls, London, Art, Video Art, Installation Art, Martyrdom, Spirituality, Religion

Id: EsCx5FU9GnQ

Length: 9min 6sec (546 seconds)

Published: Wed May 21 2014