Bill Viola's “The Crossing”
Known
to be as one of today’s leading American video artist, Bill Viola, creates not just amazing
videotapes, but entire installations that showcase an object, video images, and
recorded sound. Viola uses video as a medium to
explore the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge. “His
works focus on universal human experiences, such as birth, death, the unfolding
of consciousness, and have roots in Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual
traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism.” His
videos communicate to a diverse set of audience that will allow them to
experience that work in their own personal way.
In his work of art titled The Crossing, the
installment consist of 2 huge video screens depicting a man being consumed by elements
of nature (fire and water). In the first one, violent flames are rising up the
man’s body until his body is completely covered, and on the other, a water
falls heavily from above the figure until he disappears in the flood. Towards
the end of both videos, the man has disappeared, and a few sparks of flames and
drops of water are left to remind us of what has taken place; “a cycle of
purification, renewal, and destruction.”[1] Among
one of his influences regarding this work, Viola is greatly inspired by the
thirteenth-century Persian poet Rumi.
Rumi’s writing includes the following, which Viola took as inspiration for The
Crossing “You have seen the kettle of thought boiling over, now consider the
fire.” [1]
If you’re curious of seeing the process of the
making of Viola’s The Crossing, click here.
A specific literary text that I am reminded of is the Alan Moore’s graphic novel, “V
for Vendetta.” The graphic novel is set up in a post-nuclear war in the United
Kingdom taking place in 80s to 90s. The main character, V, is a mysterious masked anarchist
who works to destroy the totalitarian government, profoundly affecting the
people he encounters. V takes in Evey Hammond in his
secret underground lair, where she then confides in him for protection, and
then when he sacrifices himself at the end, she finishes what he had started.
When V blows up Larkhill Resettlement Camp—“one of many concentration
camps where political prisoners, homosexuals, Black people, Jews, Muslims,
Indians and Pakistanis are exterminated and were subjects to medical experimentation,
which involved artificially-designed hormone injection[2]—he is then steps out of the fire during his escape.
When Evey’s removal of fear, implemented
by V in a mock-concentration camp, she is transformed into a new person within
the rain. Both scenes, either within the fire with V, or water with Evey, show
the moment of the characters transformation not just physically, but psychologically as well. I was not able
to find the comic strips of the scenes but I did find pictures and videos.
Please enjoy.
Sources
History of Modern Art by Arnason
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