is a video artist, born in 1951. he grew up in both queens and
westbury new york and received his bfa in experimental studios
from syracuse university in 1973. after graduating he worked in
florence, italy for 18 months as technical director of production
at art/tapes/22, one of the first video art studios in europe.
he later traveled to record traditional performing arts in the
solomon islands, java, bali, and japan. in 1977 viola was invited
by cultural arts director kira perov to show his videos at la trobe
university in australia. a year later, perov moved to new york,
where she and viola married. they have lived and worked
together ever since. in 1980, they lived in japan as part of a
cultural exchange where they studied buddhism under zen
master daien tanaka. during this period, viola was also invited to
serve as the first artist-in-residence for sony's atsugi research
lab. his work has been shown at the museum of modern art in
new york, the national gallery in london, guggenheim berlin,
guggenheim new york, the whitney museum of american art,
getty los angeles and the metropolitan museum of art in new
york. viola was also selected as the u.s. representative for the
46th venice biennale, where he showed ' buried secrets',
a collection of five installations including 'the greeting'. viola has
served as a scholar in residence at the getty research institute
in los angeles in 1998 and was elected to the american academy
of arts and sciences in 2000. he currently lives and work in long
beach, california.

http://www.billviola.com

bill viola is represented by both james cohan gallery, new york
http://www.jamescohan.com
and haunch of venison, london
http://www.haunchofvenison.com

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we met bill viola in venice, on june 9th, 2007.
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what is the best moment of the day?



twilight is the most important moment of the day because that is
the time when nature herself is unstable. twilight is so beautiful
because the sun is going down and it's getting darker. the sun
has set but it's still light out. the daytime world made up of the
creatures that live in the day, the dogs, birds, squirrels, trees,
people (they live in both day and night) and plants all go to sleep.
while they're preparing to go to sleep, the animals and the living
beings from the night are waking up. this doesn't happen in a
neat little perfect line, it's actually a messy transition where
nature is still showing us light from the day but, the night has not
fully arrived. the two are kind of touching each-other and some
animals from the night time are coexisting with animals from the
daytime; it's a very special moment. the beauty of it is the
instability. this also occurs at sunrise too. so I'm interested in
moments and places of instability: thresholds of transition in
between two things. for example, my favourite times of year are
springtime and the autumn. in the springtime, the flowers try to
come up but sometimes it's still snowing. in the autumn, you have
the trees holding on to their life, some of them are loosing their
leaves and some are green. those are the kind of moments I like,
where things are not clear and you can't decide between this
and that. the age of computers is a very dangerous time for us
because computers work on 'yes or no', '1 or 0'. there's no
maybe, perhaps or both, it's only yes or no. I think this is
affecting our consciousness, because nature doesn't work that
way. nature works on maybe and poetry comes from maybe,
not from a hard fixed order. those kind of transitions and
thresholds are very very important in my work.

what kind of music do you listen to?
classical music, tibetan music, german and american music
from the cinema, ...

what books are on your bedside table?
the books I have right now are a book on chinese sung dynasty
poetry, which is I love. I have a book of the biography of the life
of buddha. I have a magazine in my study, a the technical journal
of the new high definition video cameras, which I keep with me.
I'm also reading a book about extinctions in history called 'waiting
for the macaws' by a scottish writer and I have a book on the
paintings of giovanni bellini that I was reading before I came
here. I also got a new book on alberto giacometti, who has
become one of my favorite artists, I think he's an extraordinary
artist.

do you listen to the radio?
no, not really.

where do you get your news from?
new york times, internet.

I guess that you notice how women dress,
do you have any preferences?
simple is best.

what kind of clothes do you avoid wearing?
a tie. anything that’s pretentious and uncomfortable.

where do you work on your projects?



I have a studio. I live in the los angeles area, in a town called
long beach, california and I've been living there for 25 years.
it's a very quiet street that we live on. we have two children
so it's a normal neighborhood because I don't like to live in the
centre of the city or in the centre of the art scene. I always
prefer to live on the side, just in the corner. so I have a studio,
a big studio, a warehouse industrial space where I have some
assistants. that's where we do shooting, this piece was shot in
my studio and that's where I do my work, when I make works.
but my real place to work is in a very small house across the
street from our house that I rent. I have all my books, I have
tables to write and of course my computer. that's where I work
because I used to work in my studio everyday, but what I found
was the studio was becoming very busy. I couldn't think quietly
because there were assistants doing things and when we're
doing productions there is a lot of activity. I realized I needed a
very private space because of the way I work. so what I did
was, rent this house with only three rooms. it's very quiet, I have
no telephone and that's where I really think and develop my
ideas. then when I'm absolutely ready with a new idea that I've
really really worked on very very severely, I go to my studio and I
explain it to everybody. I say this is what we are going to make
and then we start working. but if I don't have an idea, I don't go
to my studio.

could you describe your style as a good friend
of yours might?
we have all come from a place of the unborn and we
are all here for a short period of time. we have to cross a
threshold of water and light to arrive and to leave. we will
ultimately all go back to this eternal non-spatial, non-temporal
world of potentiality. a lot of my work deals with questions
like this, of giving birth, death and human transition.

what are the main characteristics of the work you are
showing here?
the main characteristics of my work here are light, water and
time. the images concern people who are approaching from a
distant place, a dark shadowy place. this world that has no
colour and has very little detail or visibility. as they approach us
they become more and more clear, present and individual.
they become more individualized and then at a certain point they
cross a threshold, an invisible threshold. this threshold is made
up of water, which is pouring from above, across the image.
the water cannot be seen because it's a special kind of water
system which has no disturbance, except at the bottom. as they
cross the threshold of water, they also meet a second surface
made of light. when they pass through this threshold,
they disturb the water and it sprays and falls everywhere.
at that moment they become materialized, they become colour,
detail and substance. the body becomes present and it's like a
kind of birth as they arrive in our space on this side of the water.
the sound gives us the impression that they're in the room,
because sound occupies space. they arrive with light and with
sound. the sound touches us in the room, becoming part of the
room we're standing in. then they spend a short amount of time
with us, recovering and gathering their senses from this very
strong transition. they then realize they have to go back,
their time is up. they must turn their backs on us and walk back
through the threshold of water and light, back into the world of
shadows. that to me is the ultimate description of human
existence.
(see the designboom report on bill viola at the san gallo church,
venice art biennial, 2007)

can you describe an evolution in your work?



the evolution in my work has been very tied to the evolution of
technology. I first touched a video camera in 1969 and the first
videotape I made was in 1970. the medium was very very
different, it was very primitive, low quality and black and white
only. so basically, I committed myself to video when I was
younger in art school. when I first touched a video camera,
something inside me said I will do this the rest of my life.
don't ask me why, but I had a vision of video moving out into the
world, into the culture, very clearly. I could feel it, so I knew I
would do it forever. technology's changing so much, it would be
as if a painter learned to paint with only a limited set of colours.
then every year there were more colours, more techniques and
that's what happened in video. this piece uses the newest high
definition video camera that's made, one that came out three
months ago. it's a really advanced camera that is on the same
level and quality as 35mm film, probably little better. that's the
colour camera in this piece. the black and white camera in this
piece is a camera from 35 years ago, that is a security camera.
so those two images are meeting, that's my palate right now,
that's the range that I have to work with. grainy, dark, black and
white only, analog video, all the way up to the latest digital,
high-definition, cinema quality camera. I don't see an end to this
process, every year I have new possibilities, technically and
creatively. so I think the most important thing is to keep up in
yourself, to make sure that you're always growing. you can
have the best technology in the world, but if you don't have an
idea, if you don't have a feeling of moving forward in life,
of trying to do something you don't know... because we always
want to do things we know, we feel very comfortable, but you
have to always make sure there's a place for something you
don't know. you have to push yourself and that for me has been
the journey.

when you were a child did you always want to become
an artist?
yes, I don't know life really without art.
I've never not been doing art. the very very first day I was in
kindergarten, when I was five years old, they gave us
finger-paints. I was making a finger painting, all the children
were making finger-paintings and I made a tornado, quite a nice
tornado. the teacher came along and said 'ohhhh, look what billy
did', she held it up and of course because I was very shy,
I was hiding under the table and all red. I was so shy, she held
it up and showed everybody, putting it on the wall.
from that day on, I was the class artist in every class growing up.
all my pictures were always on the wall in the class right until
university and now. so really I've never in my life, not done art.
I've always done art from when I was very very little,
I've always had some kind of exhibition, on the wall of the
classroom or in the museums.

is there any artists from the past that have influenced
you or that you particularly appreciate the work of?
I have colleagues and I see them in exhibitions like this,
but I don't follow the contemporary art very closely.
so I'd have to say people like alberto giacometti, joseph beuys,
mark rothko, I like their work very much.
most of the time I'm really interested in historical art
from the past, particularly italian renaissance. some of the
baroque period too, but for me northern and southern
renaissance art is very a special moment because it really was
the creation of the optical image. the first time that painters,
since the ancient greeks, based their work on how the eye sees
the world.

do you have any advice for young artists?
my advice for the young video artists is to make sure you take
the lens cap off the camera before you push the button.
because I didn't do this all the time. also to learn from the
camera, you must keep your eye open without judgment.
cameras do not make judgments. they receive all the light equally
and we have to keep our minds and hearts open to be
completely objective, feeling everything equally good and bad,
violent and peaceful, light and dark. all opposites are necessary
for life and so you shouldn't make a value judgment on what
you are experiencing. video can teach us how to see with an
open eye.

is there ethics in art?
yes, there is, there's ethics in art. there's a big responsibility
when you make an image and put it out in the world. I think the
guide for me in this is a tibetan master who was killed by the
chinese in the 1960's when the cultural revolution happened
in tibet. he said that all activity should be done with the intention
to help, not hurt others.

is there anything that you're afraid of regarding the future?
no, I have no fear of the future at all. I think the future will be a
better place. I think we will get over this kind of disruption,
disturbance and tension we feel right now because of this
medium. because of communications technology, people are
closer together then ever before. when I was a child looking at
the tv, I didn't know what arabs look like and know they're
everywhere. the cultures are growing together and that's
causing this kind of tension and instability. I think if I look forward
in the future, it's also allowing us to touch each other. I think we
just have to get the politicians out of the way, we have to get
the churches, the religious institutions out of the way. they are
the cause of the problem. they're holding onto their beliefs and
their ideas and they're manipulating the societies. we have to let
people talk directly to people. in that sense, the most important
element in this globalization process is the artist. because artists
speaks in a universal language that has no boundaries. between
past and present, between east and west, art is all equal. if the
artists don't get a voice in this new global system, there will be
trouble because art is the universal language of mankind.