Yorkshire Sculpture Park TEACHERS’ RESOURCE PACK Bill Viola 10 OCTOBER 2015–10 APRIL 2016 UNDERGROUND GALLERY AND CHAPEL ABOUT THIS RESOURCE This resource is aimed at Secondary Teachers, FE Tutors and Group Leaders working with young people and adults. It provides contextual information on Bill Viola and his work, as well as suggestions for questions, discussion and creative activities in response to the exhibition. An Exhibition Guide and Exhibition Resource Pack are also available and can be downloaded from the YSP website. A family leaflet, ‘Talking Points’, which offers playful ideas for engaging with Bill Viola’s work, also accompanies the exhibition and is suitable for all.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION This immersive exhibition in YSP's Chapel and Underground Gallery features work from across Viola's career. For over 40 years, Viola has been instrumental in positioning video as a central art form and is probably the most significant video artist working today. Viola's works are installations; complete, immersive spaces of light and sound that invite focus and concentration. Considering the universal themes of life, death, love and spirituality, Viola examines facets of the human condition, giving visual form to the psychological, metaphysical and physical frailties of being human. Viola's work is concerned with universal and individual quests for enlightenment; the bringing together of mind, matter and spirit. Much of his work deals with opposites: the body and soul, life and death, dark and light, the ordinary and the extraordinary. The humanity of Viola's work, and some of his imagery, has a particular resonance today, given the prevalence of images of mass migration and human suffering within the media. The Underground Gallery has been reconfigured so that visitors pass from room to room to experience both dramatic and intimate video installations. Spaces have been darkened to create an immersive experience where sound, the architecture of the space and moving image generate an intimate and multi-sensory experience for the viewer. The Transfiguration Series (2007–2008) include The Return, The Innocents and Three Women (room one and room five). All these works show figures passing through a threshold of water, suggestive of birth and death. The Trial (2015) (room two), a new work premiered at YSP, is a diptych of a naked man and woman who endure streams of liquid poured from above; the liquid changing from black, red, white to water. The fluids could be symbolic of human life; of earth, blood, milk and the trial of life’s rites of passage, of purification, birth and death. The Veiling (1995) (room three) comprises images projected onto thin parallel layers of translucent cloth filling the gallery space. The image is of a man and woman in a nocturnal landscape, moving from dark shadows into the light. The man and woman do not co-exist, only the light diffuses and intermingles across the layers of cloth, creating a translucent three-dimensional form. Night Vigil (2005–2009) (room four) is based on the story of Tristan and Isolde and of a love which transcends the physical realm. A man and a woman undertake their own individual journeys of enlightenment, to merge and lose themselves in a world beyond death.

Man Searching for Immortality/Woman Searching for Eternity (2013) (room six) comprises two naked older figures, a man and woman, projected onto two 7ft high black slabs. They walk towards the viewer and begin to meticulously examine their own bodies with a torchlight, searching for evidence of disease or corruption. Finally, they each turn off their light and gradually dissolve back into the stone. The Dreamers (2013) (room seven) is an installation of seven large screens which depict seven clothed individuals submerged underwater beneath a stream bed. Their eyes are closed and they appear to be at peace; the water subtly animating their bodies and the sound of running water permeating the space. Inside the 18th century chapel is The Tristan Project – Fire Woman and Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall), 2005. This draws on the ancient story of lovers gripped by a passion which can only be consummated beyond the grave. The walk from the Chapel to the Underground Gallery realises the notion of journeying, which is a theme implicit in Viola’s work, as is the sense of nature and cycles of life which is very much a part of the experience at YSP. Both exhibitions are designed to be a sensory experience with space to pause and make time to reflect, so enabling an emotional or even transformational experience. The Green Tea Room, the final room in the Underground Gallery, provides a space to read, make, think, share and to reflect. Children’s drawing materials and books are available to use in this space. A documentary film will be screened on a loop, showing Viola’s working processes. Given the nature of some of the themes explored, the exhibition may have a strong emotional impact on some visitors. Groups are welcome to use this as a quiet working space. Some of the themes explored in the exhibition can be highly emotive as can Viola’s honest depiction of the human form. Teachers and Group Leaders should be aware that there is full-frontal nudity within the exhibition.

Fire Woman, 2005 Courtesy Bill Viola Studio and YSP. Photo © Jonty Wilde

ARTIST'S BIOGRAPHY Born in 1951 in Queens, New York, Bill Viola has become one of the most acclaimed video artists in the world, and his work has been shown and collected in leading museums and galleries across the globe. Viola received his Bachelor of Fine Art degree at the newly created Experimental Studios of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, Syracuse University in 1973. Syracuse University was one of the first research universities to prepare a new generation of artists to make full use of new media and technology. Viola and fellow students led their own video movement and established the university's first cable TV system. Screenings of work by pioneering video artists such as Nam June Paik, Peter Campus and Frank Gillette, and performances by Charlotte Moormon and Yoko Ono, were also a huge influence on a new generation of students. During the 1970s, Viola was technical director for one of the first video art studios in Europe and met artists such as Bruce Nauman and Vito Acconci. From 1976 to 1983, Viola was artist-in-residence at WNET Thirteen Television Laboratory in New York. In 1976 and 1977, he travelled to the Solomon Islands, Java and Indonesia to record traditional performing arts. In 1977, he was invited to show his videotapes at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia by cultural arts director, Kira Perov. Perov and Viola later married and began a lifetime collaboration; Perov is currently executive director of the Bill Viola Studio.. Viola and Perov have travelled extensively, creating artworks in Tunisia, Japan, the American Southwest and India. Viola studied Zen Buddhism with Master Daien Tanaka while undertaking an Artist Fellowship in Japan and became the first Artist in Residence for Sony Corporation's Atsugi research laboratories. More recently, he has initiated collaborative projects with medical imaging technologies and explored animal consciousness at San Diego Zoo. His projects have explored fire walking rituals amongst Hindu communities in Fiji and photographing Native American rock sites and recording nocturnal desert landscapes. Music has also been an important part of Viola's life and he has collaborated with electronic and avante-garde composers, such as David Tudor and Edgard Varese Deserts, as well as creating a three song video suite for rock group Nine Inch Nails. In 1983, Viola taught Advanced Video at California Institute of the Arts. He represented the United States at the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995 and in 1997, the Whitney Museum of American Art organised and toured a 25 year retrospective of Viola's work. In 2004, Viola began collaborating with director Peter Sellars and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen to create a new production of Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde for the Los Angeles Philarmonic and Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, New York. In 2009, Viola was awarded the Catalonia International Prize by the Catalonian Government in Spain. This award honours an individual whose 'creative work has made a significant contribution to the development of cultural, scientific or human values anywhere in the world.' Bill Viola and Kira Perov live in Long Beach, California.

Bill Viola and Kira Perov in front of The Trial, 2015. Courtesy Bill Viola Studio and YSP. Photo © Jonty Wilde

THEMES The Journey of Life Following a long art historical tradition, Viola explores the fragility and transience of human existence. The ages of man, the inevitability of death and our personal journeys of self-discovery and higher consciousness are implicit themes in his work. Walking and journeys feature in Viola’s work, both literally and metaphorically. Figures emerge and recede into the distance in his videos; purposeful, calm, in a neutral, other-worldly space. Although neither birth or death are depicted explicitly, crossing thresholds or moving from one state to another suggests these moments, or other similar life-changing events. In the Transfigurations series (The Innocents, 2007, The Return, 2007, Three Women, 2008), black and white images of ghostly figures emerge from darkness before passing through a threshold of water into a world of colour, before being finally drawn back through to the other realm. Transfiguration refers to the moment when a person or object is transformed from within, rather than from an external force. Viola believes we can be transformed through moments of overwhelming clarity or profound experience, where we are enlightened or changed in some way. In The Return, water allows the protagonist to return, seemingly from another world, and we are left to question what it means to cross the threshold between life and death. Night Vigil (2005/2009), in room four, is based on Richard Wagner’s 19th century opera Tristan and Isolde. This is a mythic tale of a love so profound that it cannot be contained within the material bodies of the lovers. In order to fulfil their desires, the two lovers must transcend their own lives to arrive in a realm which is beyond the polarities of light and dark, male and female, life and death. In the video installation, a man and a woman are separated by darkness but are drawn to each other by a light that illuminates their longing. They undertake individual journeys; the man walks towards a blazing light and the woman, embarks on an inward journey of contemplation, methodically lighting candles until the darkness of her room is filled with light. Childhood, youth, middle and old age are shown uncompromisingly. In the diptych piece, Man Searching for Immortality/Woman Searching for Eternity (2013), in room six, two life-sized septuagenarians slowly examine their naked bodies with torches. Possibly looking for signs of illness, or considering the marks of a life and a body lived, we are confronted with the reality of change, growing older and the frailty of our physical selves.

Night Vigil, 2005–2009. Courtesy Bill Viola Studio and YSP. Photo © Jonty Wilde

Ask In Transfigurations, where do you think the figures are going? Where have they come from? What is the effect of the figures changing from black and white to colour and from High Definition to grainy video? What emotions or thoughts do you think the figures experience as they move through the water? How does the video make you feel? Within the exhibition as a whole, consider how walking or a ‘journey’ is represented. In Man Searching for Immortality/Woman Searching for Eternity, what do you think the man and woman are thinking as they inspect their own bodies? How do you feel to see a body with such clarity and honesty? Consider What journeys have you experienced, both physically and emotionally? What new things did you experience? What did you overcome on the journey? How have you changed or developed because of this journey? What events in your life have had a big impact on you? How have you responded to them? How have they made you who you are? Consider what you were like when you were younger. What stage in life are you at now? How are you different to your younger self? What ambitions, hopes or fears do you have for your adult or older self? Talk to friends or family members who are much older than yourself. Talk to them about the events in their lives which have changed who they are? What are their hopes for the future? What do they feel about ageing or death? Do Go on a journey around the Park. Walk slowly and try and stay in the moment. What do you hear, see and feel? Pay attention to your own body and physical sensations. What ‘life’ do you experience around and within yourself? Try and capture the transitions and slow movement of figures in the Viola’s installations through drawing. Can you capture their ephemeral and changing quality through line or tone? Use multiple lines, or rub lines out to capture these transient, ghost-like images. Create an imagined portrait of someone in childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Try and represent this journey by drawing, or taking photographs of objects which signify these changes, i.e. toys, clothes or possessions. You may want to make close-up observations of the skin or other personal affects which tell a story of age. Back at school, or college, suspend strips of cotton scrim or pieces of muslin from a doorway or small room and slowly walk through. Maybe add words or images onto the fabric. Draw each other as you move through. What does it feel like? How can you develop this installation to create a feeling of moving from one experience to another?

Bill Viola, Man Searching for Immortality / Woman Searching for Eternity, 2013. Courtesy Bill Viola Studio and YSP. Photo © Jonty Wilde

The Elements – Fire, Earth, Air and Water Viola was deeply affected by an experience he had as a child when he almost drowned. Instead of panicking, Viola remembers a wonderful sense of calm and seeing 'the most beautiful image I ever saw in my life': reeds, a fish, light glinting through the water. Water is an important image and concept in Viola's work and this near-death experience had a profound impact on his life and art. Figures in his videos are drenched in cascades of water; they walk through watery thresholds, or lie suspended within clear pools, maybe sleeping, dead or in quiet contemplation. Water is depicted as beautiful, powerful, purifying and un-nerving. Ask In The Dreamers, 2013 (room seven) the undulating water gently distorts the features of the figures. The figures are life-size and fully-clothed. Would you say the water has a benign or destructive quality in this work? Why? Do you think the figures are dreaming or drowning? Are they alive or dead? What sounds can you hear? How does The Dreamers make you feel? How is water represented in other works by Viola? Consider What experience do you have of water? What are its different qualities? Has your experience of water involved fear, exhilaration, contemplation, cleanliness, calm? Think about the significance of water in religious ceremony, daily rituals and ordinary lives. Visit James Turrell’s Deershelter Sky Space, which is between the Chapel and YSP Centre. Spend time, looking skywards, contemplating the air, the clouds passing by. How does the stillness, the small changes and observations of nature make you feel? Do Watch, listen to or experience being in water. Pay attention to the sea when it is stormy or calm, a lake or a river in different weathers. What sounds does water make? What power does the water have? Is it beautiful, threatening or both? What is happening beneath? How would it feel to be immersed in the water? Try and take underwater photographs or close-up photographs of the water surface. Collect sketches using different media, some observational and some imaginative of what lies beneath the water surface. Can you collect sound recordings of water? How different are the sounds as the water changes? Pour water and try and draw what you see or hear. Listen to the sounds of the rain. Explore its qualities through mark-making. Compare other artists or artworks which use water as a subject or material. You may want to compare Viola’s videos to John Everett Millais’ painting of Ophelia at Tate Britain, Marc Quinn’s Frozen Wave and Tacita Dean’s films and sound-pieces which use the sea as subject matter. Try and record the insignificant details of nature on video – the movement of a leaf, rain drops or changing shadows. Perhaps find a small area with a viewfinder and record these small signs of life over a period of time.

In Night Vigil (2005), light emerges out of the darkness and grows into the shape of a flame. The dark night is lit by flames, symbolic of love and life. A woman lights candles, filling a space with light and warmth. A woman steps and crosses into water, filling the space and becomes dematerialised into darkness. This could be read as a metaphor of the soul as it is transformed through the elements of fire, water, darkness, light. The soul finds spiritual love through the dissolution of the body, released from material form into the cosmos. Ask Who do you think are the two protagonists in Night Vigil? What are they doing? How are they different? How are they connected? Describe the progression of events? How does fire and water, light and dark feature? What might these elements represent? Consider What other stories or myths explore the idea of love or the soul ascending to a higher plane, beyond physical experience? Research Romeo and Juliet, The Divine Comedy by Dante or Greek tragedies. Do Make an artwork which uses the elements of fire and water, earth or air as part of the process of making. What happens if something is transformed by these elements? Does an object burned or left in water change and become more beautiful? What happens if you bury an artwork or leave it out in all weathers? Look at artists who have explored life processes and organic transformation as part of their work, such as Anya Gallaccio, Cornelia Parker and Andy Goldsworthy. Use light as a material or part of the making process. Draw by candle light, torch light or spot light. How does light change our perceptions and how we see and feel?

The Dreamers (detail), 2013. Courtesy Bill Viola Studio and YSP. Photo © Jonty Wilde

Video and Installation Art As a student in the early 1970s, Viola experimented with video as a material. Access to video, which was a new technology at this time, empowered artists to make their own films, which had a homemade authenticity to them. Viola has moved between analog and digital technology over the decades, and constantly pushes forward and explores new uses of technology to examine human and physical experience. Image, sound and space combine in his video installations to create an immersive experience for the viewer. Interestingly, Viola doesn’t consider himself a ‘video artist’ but as an artist who works with light. His use of ultra-slow motion video encourages the viewer to sink into the image and connect more deeply with its content. The imagery is often brutally honest and humanity is depicted with a clear, uncompromising eye. Viola's videos require time and a concentrated looking, much like any form of contemplation. Ask How does this exhibition differ from other film viewing experiences you know, i.e. on television, in the cinema? Does 'film' have different qualities within the different installations? How is it used as a material? How would you describe the 'total' experience of viewing these works? Consider how you move through the spaces, the sound, light and dark? How does the clarity, scale and film quality affect how you respond to the subject matter of the installations? How do you think these images were produced? What do you think Viola considered in terms of formal and aesthetic effects? Consider Do you think film is a 'truthful' media? How can film and photographic representations still present an imagined scenario, or manipulate the truth? Do you like seeing moving images of yourself? Do you manipulate the 'truth' of some of these images? Do Create a portrait using your iPhone or iPad. Make your portrait as simple as possible. Try and create an honest portrait which says something about your subject without using dialogue or a narrative. Play with digital film using your iPhone or iPad. See what happens when you film upside down or at different angles. Use effects to explore colour, slowing images down, making images play backwards.

Tristan's Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall), 2005. Courtesy Bill Viola Studio and YSP. Photo © Jonty Wilde

Religion and Spirituality Although Viola professes no particular faith, his work is grounded in religious iconography and spiritual belief. It really is about layers. What we're seeing around us right now is the grossest aspect of human existence, the physical world. It's things, it's stuff, it's matter. But there is another dimension – you can feel that; everyone can feel that. We all have an enormous internal world – it's without limits.(1) During his time in Florence Viola witnessed first-hand Renaissance paintings, made to measure for the niches and chapels, which he referred to later as 'preludes to 20th century installation art'. From the 1990s, influenced by the birth of his son and the death of his mother, Viola introduced Christian imagery in his work. His videos reference religious imagery and rituals, such as the lighting of candles, baptism, and the iconography of water, fire and air. Having travelled widely and experienced different cultures, Viola has immersed himself in a range of different spiritual beliefs and philosophies. Viola has drawn meaning from his deep interest in mystical traditions such as Zen Buddhism, Christian mysticism and Islamic Sufism. A lesser known strand of Christian thought, La Via Negativa, which taught that God cannot be represented visually or verbally so that the only way to discovery is not to look outward but inward, resonated with Viola. During his several visits to Japan, where he was able to visit Buddhist temples, gardens and sacred sites, Viola developed an appreciation of the stillness and silence of Buddhism and meditation. Ask Which art works do you feel have strong religious connotations? Which remind you of religious ritual or experience? How do the art works describe an inner or spiritual experience? How does Viola express something which is intangible or 'felt'? Which art works make you feel calm, reflective or removed from day to day thought or anxiety? How do they create this effect? Consider Is religion or a particular belief system important in your life? If so, how does religion help you or provide comfort or strength? If not religion, what is important to you in providing strength, comfort or a sense of well-being? What does spirituality mean to you? Do you feel you have both an 'inner' and 'outer' life? When and where do you feel happiest, the most content? What does 'at peace' mean to you and how do you think people achieve this? Do Find a quiet place at YSP where you can contemplate nature, the universe or your own inner thoughts and feelings. Listen to the sounds. Maybe focus on one spot and try to be in the moment. Shut your eyes and draw what you can ‘see’. Listen. Can you draw what you hear? Visit Buddha by Niki de Saint Phalle at YSP. Consider how nature, people and the seasons move around the constant, still, seated Buddha. Draw as a way of contemplating Buddha, paying attention to the detail of the surface mosaic, the interaction of nature and light on its surface. Research Renaissance artists such as Fra Angelico and Giotto. How do their paintings of biblical stories depict love and humanity? How are they similar to Viola's installations?

Other Related Artworks at YSP As part of your visit, you may wish to see sculptures in our open air collection which connect with some of Viola's themes. Suggested works are: Riace Figures, Elisabeth Frink (Driveside) Are the figures moving or still? Are they on a journey, emerging from the trees? Are they individuals or a community? Why do you think they have white faces? Are they involved in a ritual? Buddha, Niki de Saint Phalle (Driveside) How does Buddha make you feel? Is it a happy, joyous sculpture or serious, quiet or both? How does its size affect how we respond to it? What do you think the space at the back of Buddha could be for? One and Other, Antony Gormley (Lower Lake) Is this figure a particular individual or could it be 'everyman'? What is it looking at, or contemplating? How does it connect to nature, thinking of where it is placed, how it will change over time, what it can 'see'. How does its solitariness relate to Viola's depiction of the human experience? Crawling, Sophie Ryder (Learning Site) This is a self-portrait of the artist as half-human, half-animal. What qualities does a hare have? What does Crawling tell us about Sophie Ryder’s personality? What other clues are hidden within the surface of Crawling which would give us clues to Sophie’s life?

References 1. Quote from Bill Viola in the Financial Times, 2013; Submerged in hidden depths. By Jan Dalley Additional Reading designboom.com/design/designboom-interview-bill-viola eai.org/resourceguide/preservation/installation/interview_perov.html Video Visionary, Syracuse University Magazine. Published by Surface, 2010 Bill Viola, YSP Exhibition Guide (available in YSP shop, £6.00)