#bill viola

[thinkingimages]

Bill Viola – The Sleep of Reason (1988)

[tyger-land]

𝗕𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗩𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗮 First Light (detail). 2002.

[avtavr]

Bill Viola, Reverse Television-Portraits of Viewers, video stills, 1983-84. Broadcast television project. © Bill Viola Studio.

[phobs-heh]

RIP Bill Viola

[schizografia]

[theentitledsupreme]

Margot Robbie for W Magazine's Art Issue - 2014. [x] [x]

I see where they were going with this idea, but it looks like Margot is drowning...

[zegalba]

Bill Viola: Fire Woman (2005)

[robsheridan]

Nine Inch Nails Still trailer, 2001. Directed/edited by me, with video art by Bill Viola. I gave this a gentle upscaling in honor of Bill Viola’s recent passing. He was a legendary video art pioneer and a huge influence on me at the beginning of my career. Without Bill’s work in establishing video as a contemporary art medium, none of what I and many others have done with video art in the past 25 years would have been possible.

I was fortunate enough to work with Bill when he was commissioned to create original video art pieces for NIN’s 2000 Fragility tour. Although I was a 20 year old nobody and Bill already had a 25 year retrospective at the Whitney, I’ll never forget the kindness and respect he showed me, listening to my ideas and asking for my input as if we were equals. It helped me step through some of my imposter syndrome and become a larger creative voice on the tour production, which led me to become creative director of the next NIN tour production a few years later.

The clip here is a teaser I made in 2001 adapting some of Bill’s Fragility visuals. After trying several approaches of editing together his imagery, I ended up filming his raw footage off a screen with my DV camera, and using my own camera motion on top of his to change the flow of the piece to fit the teaser I wanted to make. It made the piece a bit more distant, abstract, jittery, and eerie; exactly what I was looking for. It’s the type of unconventional approach they would have maligned in video production classes, but became a hallmark of how I work throughout my career; so thank you Bill for opening so many glowing, flickery doors for so many.