Titles by Bill Viola
- Angel's Gate
- Anthem
- Chott el-Djerid (A Portrait in Light and Heat)
- Déserts
- Four Songs
- Hatsu Yume (First Dream)
- I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like
- Information
- Memories of Ancestral Power (The Moro Movement in the Solomon Islands)
- Memory Surfaces and Mental Prayers
- Migration
- Palm Trees on the Moon
- Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House
- Red Tape – Collected Works
- Reverse Television – Portraits of Viewers (Compilation Tape)
- Sodium Vapor (including Constellation and Oracle)
- The Passing
- The Reflecting Pool – Collected Work 1977-80
Titles with or about Bill Viola
Anthem
Anthem is a post-industrial lamentation, structured on the single piercing scream of a young girl as she stands in the vast chamber of Union Station in Los Angeles. Viola relates this structure to the form and function of religious chants, particularly Gregorian chants (using a harmonic scale in a resonant hall) and Tantric Buddhist chants (ritual exorcism and conversation with demons). The original scream is extended in time and shifted in frequency to produce a scale of harmonic notes that comprises the soundtrack, to which Viola juxtaposes images of materialism -- industry and the worship of the body, giant oil pumps and the beating human heart, cars streaming along a freeway and blood flowing through veins, modern surgical technology and tree branches in an ancient forest. The anguished scream cuts through the corporeality of the body and contemporary culture as a living organism. For Viola, the piece is a ritual evocation of "our deepest primal fears, darkness, and the separation of body and spirit."
Production Assistant/Still Photographer: Kira Perov. Vocalist: Amy Nomura. Produced in association with the TV Lab at WNET/Thirteen, New York.
SCREENING REQUIREMENTS for museum or gallery presentation:
The video should be presented as cinema. Projection in a dedicated, darkened gallery is strongly preferred. Accompanying floor plans and technical specifications regarding projection equipment is appreciated. Videos must be shown in original 4:3 aspect ratio, either using projector settings, as available, or pillarboxed with black masking.
Seating must be provided for the audience, and works must be shown according to a published schedule, not presented as an automatically repeating loop. Works cannot be incorporated into looping programs with other titles. Audio must be handled through a separate stereo sound system (amplifier and two speakers).
Please contact the EAI office (info@eai.org) for further information regarding monitor displays. Presentation on monitor may be permitted in certain instances, but the use of headphones or sound through built-in speakers is not permitted.
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