Study for Emergence by Bill Viola

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Shifting Encounters: An Exploration of Bill Violas Study for Emergence

as Passionate, as Image, as Video, and as Interactive by Rebecca Henriksen

I could tell that the figures were moving, albeit slowly, but at first I was unsure what, if

anything, was happening. I watched the video straight through, shifting my weight back and forth

between my feet. The next time I came, I found a folding stool and sat down to examine the video

more closely. I watched it repeatedly for over an hour; watching, writing, watching, thinking,

watching. What strikes me the most when I view this, as well as other video pieces, is most peoples

lack of endurance to view video pieces that stray from what we have been conditioned to expect

video to be: on a television screen, fast paced, with sound, showing us contemporary images of life

and telling us something very clearlywhether that be the weather, the news or jokes to make us

laugh. Because the medium of video is so ubiquitous in this society, and because of, among other

things, the familiarity of television shows and the democratization of video via YouTube, video art

can be a challenging concept. And yet, video artist Bill Viola has managed to achieve extensive

critical acclaim as well as widespread public appeal. In this paper, I will examine some of the

methodological and archival challenges that face video artists today, through a case study of a piece

by Bill Viola titled Study for Emergence. First, I will give an overview of the piece and how it is

displayed. I will also look at the history of the work, how it was created and the series of which it is

a part. I will consider what inspired Viola to create these evocative pieces. I will also focus on the

spiritual content and images that Viola has chosen to use in this piece. Finally, I will look into the

particularity of video as an art form, as well as explore viewer experience and response.

One is first drawn to Violas laptop-size screen because of the vibrant colors and the subtle

and slow but steady movements. Two women in an ambiguous spacethough Viola writes it is a

courtyardsit facing away from each other on opposite sides of a marble sarcophagus. They seem

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to be upset, grieving, and yet it is unclear regarding what. Their clothing strikes one as

contemporary, yet combined with the ambiguous setting and cistern, one questions the time period.

The woman on the left is older, has a cropped haircut and is wearing a long dark blue garment that

might be a dress with a black sweater and sandals. The younger woman on the right has longer hair,

is wearing black pants with a white tank top and is barefoot. At the beginning of the video both

women have their heads covered, but the woman on the right takes off her scarf and while she is

turning her head, she notices the other woman. Only when the younger woman turns towards her a

second time, though, does the older woman acknowledge her presence. The video is without sound

and Viola writes that time becomes suspended and indeterminate, the purpose and destination of

their actions unknown.i Then, the woman on the right turns towards the cistern, apparently

noticing something. A man, looking stony and dead, starts emerging from the sarcophagus which

one now realizes is filled with water. The water overflows onto the marble steps, catching the

attention of the older woman. Both women seem extremely surprised at this miraculous event

and the younger woman grasps his arm and caresses it as if greeting a lost lover.ii The man falls

forward and the older woman catches him while the younger woman clasps his feet. The women

lower his limp body to the ground. Is he dead? Resurrected? The younger woman pulls a billowing

sheet from her bag and covers his body, initially reaching to cover his face, but subsequently

stopped by the older woman who is holding his head in her lap and caressing his hair. Does he need

to be able to breathe or is the older woman taking this opportunity to say good-bye (again?)? As the

older woman is stroking his head, the younger woman takes his right hand, examines it, kisses it and

then lays her head on his chest while holding his hand to the back of her own head. Viola writes of

this scene, Cradling his head on her knees, the older woman finally breaks down in tears as the

younger woman, overcome with emotion, tenderly embraces his body.iii Is this who the women

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have been mourning? The image fades to black and then, after a few seconds, loops and returns to

the start of the scene. This repeats. And repeats. And repeats.

Having described the action in this video piece, I now turn to more formal concerns. Most

of the action takes place within the lower half of the picture plane, with the man activating the

highest point of the plane at the epitome of his ascent. The image is balanced throughout and

remains roughly symmetrical. The cistern looks classical in its design and it displays a reddish-

orange circle outlined in green that highlights the white cross shape on the front. One notices that

the marble of the cistern, the skin of the man and the sheet with which he is covered are all a creamy

white. This stands in stark contrast to the ruddier skin tones of the two women and their more

colorful clothes, and even contrasts with the neutrally-colored backdrop and ground. While the

colors are rich, they match the movements in the piece: poignant but never jarring.

Viola has framed the piece beautifully, though in a conservative and traditional manner, with

all of the action appearing on screen (as opposed to being suggested off screen or moving between

on and off screen). Even though one is directly privy to all of the action, one is still left with many

questions. Viola mentions that the space is meant to be a courtyard, and yet at the same time the

scene feels staged, which, of course, may be because it is. The space seems calculated as does the

action, and yet simultaneously trying to portray a spontaneous event.

Because of the level of calculation that this piece implies, one begins to wonder how Viola

pulls off this hauntingly beautiful, and very wet, feat. John Walsh, writing of his experience visiting

the artist in his studio while Emergence was being filmed explains that the set consists of not only a

marble wellhead in the center, but also a system to produce a flood from the well and a large

reservoir to recycle the water.ivv Viola has created this entire set and has hired a professional

camera crew to do the shooting. He has also hired three actors: Weba Garretson, Sarah Steben and

John Hay. Hay, Walsh writes, is supposed to rise-up from the well using just his leg strength, but

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since he is supposed to be dead, it cant look as though he is propelling himself.vi He does a

remarkably smooth job and looks eerily stony in his white greasepaint. They have already done six

shoots and everyone is weary, but Viola decides they have time to shoot one more; over the course

of two days, the three actors rehearse without the water and then they do the seven wet takes. Yet

for this seventh take, everyone wants to go home: Weba Garretson, who plays the older woman, is

exhausted and out of sorts, but this time the action has such electricitygenerated partly by anger

and a desire to get it over withthat when the camera whines to a stop, everybody cheers. Viola

jumps on stage to embrace the actors, and everybody knows thats it. And it was.vii As artists have

done and continue to do studies for drawings and paintings, video art pieces too require careful

preparation and preliminary studies that allow artists to work out exactly how they would like to

create and give materiality to their ideas.

In Violas case, these studies often involve not just the artist, but an entire cast and crew.

Viola carefully communicates his vision to the collaborators, who then must work together to create

this piece of art. Walsh notes the similarities between producing paintings and the process by which

Viola created much of his earlier work, even though these earlier piecesusually large projections

of manipulated images with soundlooked radically different from old master paintings.viii

Walsh writes that, like landscape and genre painters drawing in sketchbooks, a video artist in the

1970s and 80s like Viola roamed around observing and capturing the real world, stockpiled the tape,

then edited it and altered it by himself to make works that embody his personal temperament and

insight.ix Walsh goes on to describe how Violas newer works, while resembling paintings in their

final formthey are framed, on a wall, silent, steady, and almost still, offering direct, intimate

encountersare nevertheless more akin to that of a feature film than a painting in their

production.

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This fascinating relationship between Violas work for The Passions series and paintings is

crucial for understanding how Viola was inspired to create these pieces. Specifically, Viola was

influenced by the medieval and early-Renaissance tradition of the small devotional picture that could

be easily carried with a person: he says that the art of the fifteenth century especially captivated me,

when the image was in transition to the new optical techniques, and the population was increasingly

mobile. People needed portable images to take with them on the road, and artists responded to this

need.x Viola likens the contemporary changes in technology of image-making to the changes that

were occurring in the fifteenth century: technological changes such as the use of computers and

digital imaging are comparable to those that took place then with the advent of printing from

movable type and the invention of perspective as a means of representing space on a two-

dimensional surface.xi While painting and video are similar in that they both become visible

through light, a striking difference is the contrast between a paintings static imagery and a videos

shifting imagery. Yet, Violas tendency to reduce the speed of his pieces, sometimes drastically,

heightens the tension for the viewer because of the blurring of expectations that are particular to

each genre of art.

Another aspect of Study for Emergence that is quite arresting is its size. At only about 10 x

13, the piece is quite intimate. Ones experience is like that of watching a movie on ones laptop,

rather than projected onto a screen as one expects when viewing a film in public. Viola was struck

by the image quality that could be attained on a plasma screen, with no glass in front of the image.

Thus, the viewers experience is all the more intimate and dynamic: there is less physically between

the viewer and the image. Questions regarding scale are part of Violas process as he works to

develop his pieces: he feels free to try a variety of sizes, yet the yardstick to which he compares

these is the human body. He is conscious of how people will relate to his pieces, and in the case of

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Study for Emergence, he has created an intimate setting. When Viola was viewing LCD flat panels for

the first time, he recounts:

I found myself falling into the image, getting lost in its aura, and it was only sixteen inches wide! This provided the final link I needed to realize that immersion is not dependent on scale, that it has to do with some other property of the image. Computer screens are normally placed at reading distance, and the experiences Id had with these close-up images were just as involving as the other large-scale visual experiences. I thought about how a small icon of the Madonna is a powerful focal point that can command the entire space of an enormous cathedral.xii Alongside the changes in technology, Violas personal life was also in a state of upheaval: his

father was slowly and inexorably dying. When Viola was inspired to create this series he was a

scholar-in-residence at the Getty Research Institute, and also had to travel on occasion with his

twenty-five-year survey exhibition that was on the road for a period of two years. While his father

was alive, but fading, Viola was at the Art Institute of Chicago for a planning meeting. He walked

into a gallery of fifteenth century paintings where Dieric Bouts Crying Madonna was hanging. Viola

remembers she was all by herself, eyes swollen and red in the excruciating detail of the Northern

painters hard-core realism, with tears streaming down her face. I began sobbing uncontrollably. I

couldnt stop.xiii When Viola reflected on this moment, he realized how his relationship to artwork

had changed: instead of being merely a viewer, he had become a participant. The function of

these medieval representational devotional paintings was to aid people in participating empathetically

in the painting and becoming a meditative sufferer.xiv Thomas Faunce writes that the medieval

artist, as does Viola, strove to overcome complacency in matters of spiritual development, the art

arousing heightened emotions which could then be harmonized in prayers for forgiveness and by

redemptive grace.xv Viola creates his pieces with a similar sentiment in mind, trying to engage the

viewer: how can video be an act of self-reflection, while still engaging another person? He has

struggled to discover how to portray the depth of emotions that people experience and create a

connection between and among people through the medium of video.

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Viola kept these thoughts and experiences in mind as he visited the Gettys collections and

as he attended the weekly scholars seminar titled, Representing the Passions. In the seminar,

scholars discussed how to represent extreme emotional states when their nature defies

representations, being about irrationality and loss of control.xvi Viola recounts that one of the

paintings with which he spent much time was Bouts The Annunciation, which he interprets as being

about a conversation that transcends language, about inner knowledgewhile still dealing with the

theme of Mary becoming pregnant with the Christ child. He also is enthralled by both the

specificity of Gabriels hand gestures, as he points heavenward, and the ambiguity in Marys hand

gestures: is she opening up her hands to receive the message from Gabriel or is she bringing them

together in prayer? Viola transfers these two ideas specifically to his work in Emergence; he makes

Emergence about a poignant, wordless interaction between three people where the symbols and

actions make specific references while also embodying multiple meanings.

As Bouts work inspired Viola conceptually, so Masolinos Pieta inspired Viola visually.

Masolinos fresco of the Pieta shows Mary and St. John placing the dead Christ into the tomb. Viola

recounts that he even sketched this image, which he says he rarely does, and put the image away.

Much of what inspires him, and eventually comes out in his work, is the result of the feelings and

emotions that grow as one lives with images and experiences life with these images in mind. This

transformation of the image, after he has lived with it, into something with which Viola can work,

is crucial. Viola is very clear that he is not interested in recreating or restaging older paintings; he

wants to get inside these paintings, to embody them, to inhabit them, to feel them breathe.xvii

What results from this transformation is the image that is now Emergence, a man rising from a

cistern that is overflowing with water and who is then caught by two emotionally overcome women.

In Mark Kidels short film, Bill Viola and Emergence, Viola explains his own ideas surrounding

the imagery in this piece. He gives two broad meanings, stating also that he does not want to lock

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the imagery into one meaning, but prefers the meaning to remain fluid and unstable. He says that

from a contemporary perspective, one sees the aftermath of a drowning; theres [sic] two women

pulling a limp, lifeless figure out of water.xviii But if one were to view the piece from what Viola

calls the inner eye, one would see a birth, of water overflowing and a young man whos

practically naked being taken out by women, almost in the function of midwives; of bringing a being

into the world.xix Viola is fascinated and inspired by instability and flux. When asked what his

favorite time of day is, he answered twilight, because he believes that it is at this time when Nature

herself is unstable. The transition from day to night is not a precise switch, but rather a messy shift

when there is still light from the day, when daytime and nighttime creatures are coexisting.

These liminal spaces where meanings blur together, these thresholds where definitive answers

cannot be found, are the places where Viola gets his inspiration, places which also arouse the

feelings he tries to evoke in his pieces. Is this man dead? Is he being resurrected? Is he being

birthed for the first time? Who are these women? Is the one on the left his mother? A

grandmother? A mentor? Is the one on the right a sister? A friend? A lover?

While the imagery in Violas Study for Emergence is ambiguous, it is at the same time grounded

in the Christian religious tradition. When viewing this piece, if one is familiar with the biblical

resurrection story and with religious art historically, one might very well read this piece as a

continuation of imagery that focuses on the dead Christ figure and on the grief of the women

surround him.xx However, Viola argues that themes of crucifixion and resurrection are not

uniquely Christian themes: when artistically portrayed, they can strike a universal emotional chord.

They become not only crucifixion and resurrection, but suffering and death, and birth and the

unfolding of consciousness. Caridad Svich writes that Violas work is modeled on classical paintings

and altarpieces, reworking traditional Christian narratives by stripping them of their Christian

context.xxi Thus, these new images draw on and reference traditional Christian imagery, yet they

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also take on a fundamentally transformed life of their own; and yet even these ideas of

transformation and rebirth are also traditional Christian themes. Svich goes on to write that the

reason these images resonate universally is that humans created religion in order to glimpse the

divine; in acknowledging the works of classical painters and fresco artists, Viola reminds us of the

images and stories that have been hard-wired into our brains, and how many of our religious

scenarios, and indeed, the images that we recall from them, were at root human creations made to

understand or throw light upon the divine.xxii Again, the beauty of this artwork is that its skin can

be peeled away repeatedly to reveal numerous layers of meaning.

Another layer of ambiguity in The Passions series is that of the actual expression of the

emotions, of the passions themselves. Rather than scour for people in situations who are

experiencing real emotions, Viola has chosen to hire actors to perform these emotions. Yet, what

constitutes the difference between real feelings and emotions and acted feelings and emotions?

When Viola started working with actors, he realized that the line between real and acted emotions

was extremely fluid, sometimes even nonexistent. Viola also realized that he wanted to strip away

any narrative context and focus solely on the expressing of emotions. He recounts in an interview:

The depth and reality of this world startled me. It completely overturned my preconceptions about acting, which, coming out of performance art and verit video, I had always classified in the domain of artificialitythe world of theatricality, of conscious public presentation, emulation, and simulation. But here were these very real emotions coming from the residual effects of real experiences within the person. I realized that the artificiality I was coming to terms with was not in the emotion itself, but in the context for that emotionin other words: the story or the plot. I was fascinated by the fact that you have someone who is really crying, feeling real pain, but who is, in the same instant, pretending to be someone else in a fabricated, parallel story where they are playing a character who is crying at that moment. So I had the strong desire to get rid of the story, to discard the plot, the narrative, and just deal with the emotions. I suppose its similar, in a way, to a painter who wants to go into Red as the experience of pure color, not as part of the pictorial illusion of a rose.xxiii

This removal of the narrative plot line, which Viola likens to the move made by abstract painters,

allows ostensibly for a more pure experience of these emotions. Thus, though Viola has hired actors

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and has staged his video pieces much like a film, the emotions themselves are real and actually

experienced.

The reason we as viewers and participators in Violas work are able to engage so intensely

with these emotions is because they have been captured on film and slowed down; we have time to

see the minute changes in facial expression, to engage with the people whom we are viewing and to

reflect both on their experiences and our own. Thus, it is because of video and the sculpting of

time that we have this ability to relate to these pieces so intimately.xxiv Video as a medium for art

burst onto the scene in 1965 and, as Viola argues, not since the Renaissance have artists been able

to use a medium that one could say is the dominant communication form of the society. Marc

Mayer elaborates, writing that there is, therefore, no longer a need to expand the idea of art to

embrace the whole range of man-made [sic] things, including all tools and writing in addition to the

useless, beautiful, and poetic things of the world, for in the case of video, they all exist at once in

the same device.xxv In video, the practical and the beautiful are not mutually exclusive. Viola is

fascinated by the video camera itself as a philosophical system that creates surrogate representations

of reality, and especially because of its ubiquity and its ability to convince us that what we are seeing

is the truth, and not a fabrication. Viola believes that video is the language of our time and he thinks

that its ability to be mass produced in its original form is extraordinary. If you buy any of his pieces,

Thats the work! Its not a documentary. [] you are buying the art in the form it was originally

created for. Youre not buying the poster of Cezanne that you can put on your bedroom wall.

Youre buying the video; youre buying the oil painting of the Cezanne, in a sense.xxvi Video art,

therefore, has the potential to further democratize art: people can buy the video on a DVD or in

digital form and view it in their own homes. This revives questions about the place of art in society:

does art belong in museums? Galleries? Public outdoor settings? Homes? On individual laptops?

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The fact that video is so ubiquitous in our society is one of the reasons why I think Violas

work creates an initial moment of disconnect with the viewer: one is familiar with the medium in

general, but not necessarily how it has been used by Viola. The extreme slowness with which Study

for Emergence plays out draws one in and forces one to evaluate and re-evaluate the imagery. It allows

one the time to notice all of the in-between moments in actions and emotions that one is not able to

see in paintings and are lost or indistinguishable when one experiences life in real time. Viola

takes into account how we as a culture have been trained to view mediated images and, so, he

takes the participant out of both the pace at which we experience life and the speed with which

movies unfold. He deliberately suspends time and alters the sonic environment so that the viewer,

the audience, has to see [his] work differently, and thus is asked to engage with an image outside of

what has become normal in our mediated world.xxvii The audience then begins to realize how

much they have been fixated by still paintings or pictures, imagining the moments just before and

just after the moment captured in the image, or, how wholly conditioned they are to interpret movie

time as the same as our time.

As the audience engages with the Study for Emergence, and as the piece unfolds ever so slowly,

viewers participate in the meditative and suffering state of the figures and come to be aware of their

own humanity and embodiment. Paradoxically, the piece requires real time in order to experience

the drastically decelerated time. David Morgan writes:

The minutes pass slowly in a video installation. The average gallery or museum visitor spends only a few seconds before each painting or sculpture. Videos take time. [] Video requires you to stand as a body in a public space among other bodies and wonder what to do with yourself, your material self, as you spend anywhere from two minutes to an unbearable ten or twenty watching a stream of images on a monitor or projected onto a wall. There is something about the act of looking in museums that tends to make the viewer unaware of herself. Video installations challenge this by making you visible to yourselfyou become a social presence confronting yourself and others, perhaps even becoming part of the art work itself.

The issue of the bodythe one seen and the one doing the seeingis an important part of video art. [] Movie theaters provide soft chairs and a dark room for viewers to

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forget themselves, including their bodies. But video installations in gallery spaces are altogether different. They are very often about the act of viewing and the time it takes to do so. They prompt a spatial and temporal self-consciousness that makes us uneasy.xxviii

But, at the same time that the audience is aware of itself, Viola also tries to create moments and

places where people can escape the frantic pace of life and meditate on the profundity of the human

body: what it is, what it can feel, what it can experience, and how it can relate to others. Thus,

viewers become participants in Violas work as they reflect on both the imagery and their embodied

experience of viewing the imagery.

Violas focus on human figurestheir emotions and their relationshipsis what allows this

self reflection by audience members. Again, I turn to Morgan, who so eloquently expresses Violas

fascination with exploring the human condition in his art:

Viola's work suggests that the human condition consists of the fact that we are embodied beings yearning, but ill-prepared, for communion with one another; that we suffer pain and loss; that we struggle to transcend our bodies and our suffering by connecting with a larger or inner aspect of reality; and that we die. Bodies, communion, suffering, transcendence, and death collectively constitute a condition, a worldview that the artist seeks to investigate in his work. Whether one is Buddhist or Christian or atheist (of the Camus variety), coming to terms with suffering and fear and our inability to communicate these states adequately presumes an understanding of the human condition, and Viola finds video a powerful artistic means of exploring these existential facts.xxix

Viola uses the combination of video and human bodies to explore these themes. Specifically in

Study for Emergence, the themes of bodies, communion, suffering, transcendence and death are all

present. It is profoundly meaningful that birth and death imagery can be so intertwined and yet

remain so ambiguous. At conception we are in a fundamental relationship with another and even at

birth, we are fragile and mortal. The white greasepaint on Hays reads as vernix; or it also reads as

lifeless and stony death. The women catch him and lower him to the ground; they are relating to

one another and yet it is unclear from where this man has just emerged. Is he at the beginning of

life? Has he just drowned? Has he just been baptized and reborn? Has he died, and are we now

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witnessing his resurrection? As we view this scene, entering into the grief of these two women, we

experience their suffering as we simultaneously are reminded of the griefs in our own lives. Violas

hope, however, is not to leave the viewer in a state of suffering, but rather to allow viewers to then

leave the exhibit with changed, if ever so faintly, vision of themselves and how they engage the

world.

The ambiguity that Viola creates in his imagery gives his videos life and depth. He refuses to

solidify meanings while simultaneously referencing symbols and traditions that are grounded in

specificity. His Study for Emergence is a glimpse into his creation process and how he creates

contemporary pieces that are laden with historicity. Its intimate size, vibrant colors, universal

themes and extreme slow motion invite the viewer to participate in the piece and to linger. One

must stay long enough to allow oneself to be open to self-reflection and yet one does not necessarily

have to view the piece sequentially in its entiretyone can, or one can return to it and see different

moments each time. However, one chooses to view Violas pieces, one learns to see a little

differently.

i John Walsh, The Artist in His Studio, Bill Viola, John Walsh, eds., Bill Viola: The Passions (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2003), 140. ii Ibid. iii Ibid. iv Walsh, 261. v The piece that I am examining Study for Emergence, is one of the takes that occurred during this filming session. vi Ibid. vii Ibid. viii Ibid, 262. ix Ibid, 263. x Bill Viola and Hans Belting A Conversation, June 28, 2002 Bill Viola, John Walsh, eds., Bill Viola: The Passions (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2003), 197. xi Richard Morphet, Encounters: New Art from Old, (London: National Gallery Company Limited, 2000), 319. xii Viola and Belting, 203. xiiiIbid, 198.

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xiv Thomas Faunce Nurturing Personal and Professional Conscience in an Age of Corporate Globalization: Bill Violas The Passions The Medical Journal of Australia, Volume 183 Number 11/12, 5/19 December 2005, 600. xv Ibid. xvi Viola and Belting, 198. xvii Ibid, 199. xviii Bill Viola in Bill Viola and Emergence [film] by Mark Kidel (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 2002). xix Ibid. xx Patrick McArdle Ecce Homo: Theological Perspectives on Personhood and the Passions in Australian EJournal of Theology Pentecost 2006 Special Edition, Issue 7. xxi Caridad Svich, A Process of Perception: A Conversation with Bill Viola in Contemporary Theatre Review Volume 14(2), 2004, 73. xxii Ibid. xxiii Viola and Belting, 201. xxiv Raymond Bellour An Interview with Bill Viola in October, Vol. 34, (Autumn, 1985), 97. xxv Marc Mayer Digressions Toward an Art History of Video in Being and Time: The Emergence of Video Projection Karen Lee Spaulding, ed., (Buffalo: The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, 1996), 16. xxvi Svich, 79. xxvii Ibid, 75. xxviii David Morgan, Spirit and Medium: The Video Art if Bill Viola in Image: Art, Faith, Mystery Issue 26, Spring 2000. xxix Ibid.