Session: Bill Viola: Notes

Bill Viola:                         

The eye the heart

1. Introduction
2. childhood memories
3. student years and political video
4. Mysticism, the desert and near-drowning
5. on making work: project books; "the crossing" and "emergence"
6. "the passions: recent work and conversation with Peter Seliars 
7. "the true image which is not visual"

Bill viola and the making of Emergence.

Jans points:

• Autobiographical
• making us stop and think about time passing
• what is the notion of an autobiography
• how do we create narratives about ourselves?
• death comes into it, how?
• How does he do these things?

My Notes/points on film:

• Black and white film static and grainy throughout. Creates a surreal and tense aesthetic.
• Can hear the sound of breathing which seems to me mirrored somehow in the visuals
• quite eery in those opening scenes
• tense
• the darkness creates suspense, combined with the breathing it is quite creepy.
• shots of a mans face, as though we are watching him sleep too closely
• Are the scenes his dreams? fantasy? surreal...
• passing of time his childhood?
• seems initially to explore memory and internalisation of life, the mind? dreams or thoughts, time.
• The creating seems to be the undertone of the film, this conveys a sense of life or being alive.
• flipping back and forth between shots of what seems to be dreaming and the sleeping male and female.. surreal vs the reality? conscious vs the unconscious?
• train tunnel? 
• shots of people and children uncomfortably close to camera, as though in your personal space. involves the viewer, makes you feel tense again.
• Sound is replaced by an industrial sound which clears into that of a train coming from the tunnel seen previously.
• intense scene of a baby having just been born. the umbilical cord still attached. then covered in cloth. scenes are all in slow motion but this one seems particularly slow.
• whole film seems to below some sort of "level" whether thats un der water level, or the subconscious, we are invited to see a newborn child which is overly personal and somehow too close or below the normal level of openness etc.
• a white dove, does this reference anything? 
• desolate and broken down caravans, homes etc surrounded by water. Water becoming more prominent in film overall at this point. or in the dreams... Seems to awaken the man as though a nightmare. Did he drown at some point in life?
• life unfolding throughout the film, links to the passing of time, concerns with that?
• scenes are shot in the desert as though from eye of male figure. first person giving the eternal viewer a sense of involvement as though experiencing first hand.
• Shadow walking across the earth. interesting visually.
• Falling in the desert, does this intentionally mirror the falling of the little boy in the sand?
• babies feet playing in the water cutting to scenes of drowning again... real concern with the mirroring of child and adult life seems to be apparent.
• Elderly man, appears to be dying, very close up shots of the face and breathing apparatus
• Isolated tree in the moonlight followed by more trees at night being lit in an unusual manner, traces movement of light from that of a passing car and its shadows formed from headlights etc on the trees and surrounding landscape.
• Close up of moving along the road, further explores the notion of movement and passing time. travelling somewhere. 
• candle flickering close up. focus on light again. is this focus on light an exploration of positive and negative energy? or experiences? 
• Fruit bowl at the table lit in quite a specific way. Art reference?
• Spot lights as though being interrogated. 
• I found myself very uncomfortable during scene of little boy playing with trucks/tractors/cars due to the heavy breathing. we are too close to him and the breathing makes the scene feel perverse to me... or as though the boy is in danger, I don't like it!
• The scene where we revisit the table setting, and it is tipped over i find really interesting, as now, the objects and space is underwater. 
• Im unsure if the woman seen in the casket is actually the same woman we see head breathing in bed, and later did i mistake the scene of the person in hospital with breathing apparatus to be male when in fact was her? perhaps she is the woman seen in close ups throughout the film at intervals. and now she has passed after we see her dying?
• A scene of the man underwater in clothes, laying on the bottom of a shallow depth of moving water, seemingly dead ends the film.

Overall the film feels too close, too uncomfortably personal as though seeing straight into or even experiencing a mans internal mind. All the tensions and anxiety that surround his life experiences are put to the foreground which I find unsettling. There is a clear tension between light an dark throughout, and a mirroring in the experiences of the mans life such as with the falling child in the sand and the falling adult self in the desert, this occurs again with the water scenes, padding vs drowning. Could this be a way of portraying light versus dark in life experiences? The good vs the bad? 

The desolate buildings and isolated objects within the landscape provoke the feeling of loneliness and sadness as though referencing the idea we are alone. Or rendered useless and desolate in old age. Whether this was intentional or not i am unsure. Time passing and movement seems to be a major part of the film, never stopping or pausing as thought detailing a constant thought stream or documentation of a life. The spaces given to us such as the desert and the internal areas of dilapidated buildings and crumbling structures creates a very uncomfortable atmosphere. I would be quite nervous being in any of those surroundings. It is a very claustrophobic film, as though we are too close to this person unwillingly by being show his inner thoughts and memories etc. Also the scenes are shot at very close proximity to faces, people and children which somehow breaks the boundaries of social etiquette, we don't get up in peoples personal space to often. To watch the film we all had to sit very quietly and still. no sound to drown out the exterior sound. This involves us even more. Its overall a very visceral film that doesn't allow us to escape from its visual at all.

The grey grainy scenes explore the moments of half sleep. The black and white focuses our attention, it is not distracting us with colour. There is emphasis on shadow, light and also, is that how he feels, depressed? black and white is seemingly quite miserable. There is a sense of emotion just through the photography of the materials. He's looking at the internal economy and how we see the world though lots of different ways. Time stretched out, and then crunches back together. So he's playing around with how we conceptualise time. When watching the film time does actually feel like it is slowed down. the slow motion adds to this. Our perception of time is very personal, when you are coming u to deadlines for example everything goes so fast, yet when waiting for something it moves so slow. "We get the idea that time is quite elastic" - Janet. Water puts us into a sort of trance, a sense of eternity comes into the mind. Time stretches out and almost becomes spacial. Janet says he is fond of water, yet i got the impression he was drowning. He uses the landscape a lot as a way of exploring biology and also the human body. (peter doug painting of the landscape) we see these shadows and they become quite scary, like phantasms of the mind as a child. Meteorites across the landscape, which are actually cars. etc.
He has a very interesting way of working with time. for example with the eyes opening and closing, this shows how in the dream world, things in the outside world can interrupt the sleep. in and out of consciousness.
The tunnel references coming in and out of life and light etc, in and out of birth and death. going into the night and out. There is a life time of clutter in the house during the scene where he walks through the house. The objects were seemingly a juxtaposition of random things, however they are not as they are contextualised in a lifetime of things and experiences. This makes us look at our own lives and objects etc also. (tidying room? things under bed? what we can't see doesn't effect us?... just an interesting point)

All about time passing, memory. (this could link with my independent study. use as a reference)

There is actually a professional camera man invalid in this he does not record it himself.