***  Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Forum1 Archive  ***
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   [Date]: Sun, 19 Dec 1999 18:33:01 -0500
   [From]: Christy Sheffield Sanford <christys@gnv.fdt.net>
     [To]: Cultural Exchange via Internet <forum1@herz.kbx.de>
[Subject]: Re: [forum1] Bill Viola

Enough of this Bill Viola bashing.  He's one of my favorite artists,
each installation I've seen has been like a poem.  This doesn't mean he
can do no wrong, but certainly he has a right to his interpretation of
St. John (date 1983)!  At least be familiar with the work before joining
in a "me too" chorus.
http://www.moca.org/pc/col/elpaso/viola.htm
http://www.archined.nl/news/9810/viola_eng.html


http://www.ocd.or.at/ics/others/cs6_14.html
"Bill Viola's multimedia "Room for St. John of the Cross" received the
first Polaroid International
Video Art Award from Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art, out of 200
entries. 

On entering an unlit gallery, viewers are confronted with a large video
image of mountains projected on a screen and a roaring
soundtrack of wind and earthquake-like rumbling. The mountain image was
shot with a hand-held camera in a moving car,
making it jagged and disorienting. In the center of the gallery is a
cell the size of the one in which the saint was confined. Unlike
the prototype, however, this cell has a window, which reveals an earthen
floor, spartan furniture and, on a table, a small color
television with a fixed image of the same mountainscape as that on the
large screen. As a visitor leans through the window to
examine the interior of the cell, the booming sound recedes. In its
place is a second sound track: the muted cadence of the poems
being read quietly in the original Spanish.64"