A splash of genius
Bill Viola: The Raft
Drowning the senses and lifting the spirit.
In 2007, Alan Rifkin of the Los Angeles Times visited Bill Viola's studio, where the internationally acclaimed video artist was presenting a talk to a group of undergraduate students. Viola dimmed the lights and played the video from his latest installation work, The Raft, and Rifkin later described the piece for his readers.
In hypnotising slow motion, he wrote, a crowd of people comes together. Their interactions are distilled and amplified, inspiring a profound humanist response in the viewer; we see that the fabric of human interaction is both fragile and beautiful.
But somewhere in this work, Rifkin continued, "there's the slightest quality of threat, shadowing the awareness of beauty, without which the beauty of life can't exist. And you remember now what you have always known: that one day this unseen enemy will have its say."
The enemy does present itself in The Raft, overwhelming the gathered crowd in a brutal onslaught. The attack itself is strangely graceful, but it is the reaction of his subjects that fascinates Viola, not their destruction. And somehow, within his chaotic scene, we see a kind of trembling hope.
The working title for the piece was Unseen Foe, Rifkin said, "But you've got to wonder if calling it The Raft hints at what Viola didn't start out knowing - that everyone here, the audience, the world, is in a lifeboat; that no one escapes, yet something survives."
Presented in association with the Melbourne International Arts Festival, Bill Viola's The Raft is currently installed at ACMI.
This arresting, inspiring work is part of a special focus on Viola that extends to St Carthage's Church in Parkville, where his near-Biblical interpretation of scenes from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde are also on display.
ACMI is thrilled to be involved with such a groundbreaking screen artist and we encourage you to step into his worlds while you can.
Bill Viola: The Raft is at ACMI's Gallery 2 until Sunday 20 February.
Bill Viola: Fire Woman and Tristan's Ascension is at S Carthage's Church until October Saturday 23 October.
Published Friday, 15 October 2010
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