Nineteen people of varying age, race and sex gather in tight physical proximity, as a compact human mob, when without warning a gushing onslaught of water from both sides of the screen knocks them into one another and down to the ground.

The Raft (Bill Viola, 2004).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	10 min 22 s
Size: 	121 MiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1280x720 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	29.970 fps
Bit rate: 	1 501 kb/s
BPP: 	0.054
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC LC @ 128 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/C10EF0E47822A77/The_Raft_(Bill_Viola,_2004).mkv

Language(s):No dialogue
Subtitles:None

The post Bill Viola – The Raft (2004) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Structured in five parts, Il Corpo Scuro (The Dark Body), The Language of the Birds, The Night of Sense, Stunned by the Drum, and The Living Flame, the tape envisions a metaphysical journey of rational and intuitive thought, from the natural world to spiritual rituals. Viola’s poetic investigation of subject and object, observing and being observed, and his search for knowledge of the self is encapsulated in an indelible visual metaphor: an image of the artist reflected in the pupil of an owl’s eye.

Quote:
One of the major works in video, I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like envisions an epic quest for transcendence and self-knowledge. Viola describes this work as a “personal investigation of the inner states and connections to animal consciousness we all carry within.” The title is taken from the Rig-Veda, the Sanskrit spiritual text that defines a procession through birth, consciousness, primordial existence, intuition, knowledge, rational thought, and faith, to arrive at a transcendent reality “beyond the laws of physics.” Unfolding in powerful, emblematic images and allegorical passages, Viola articulates a dramatic quest for self-knowledge through an awareness of the Other, embodied here by a shamanistic vision of animal consciousness.

1.58GB | 1h 29mn | 708×531 | mkv

http://nitroflare.com/view/698F5A60D7364C4/I_do_not_know_what_it_is_I_am_like_-_B._Viola_%281986%29.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/A54902748A4907D/I_do_not_know_what_it_is_I_am_like_-_B._Viola_%281986%29.part2.rar

Language:Shamanic
Subtitles:None

The post Bill Viola – I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like (1986) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Gerald Fox’s film documents Bill Viola and his wife and close collaborator Kira Perov’s odyssey to create two permanent video installations for London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, Martyrs and Mary, the first art commissions of their kind to be installed in Britain’s most famous religious space.
Heralded as the world’s greatest video artist, Bill Viola continues to astonish with every work. This intimate, 12 years in the making documentary, captures the spiritual dimension of his ground-breaking oeuvre and creative process. We’re proud to present it simultaneously with its UK cinema tour!

http://nitroflare.com/view/48783A59866C738/Bill.Viola.The.Road.to.St.Paul%27s.2017.720p.MUBI.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-Cinefeel.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Gerald Fox – Bill Viola: The Road to St Paul’s (2017) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A man between daydreaming and nightmaring, between the call of life and the call of death; his night in mid-water, apnea, perfored by a succession of visions…

Or/and an autobiographical essay whose antagonist strenghs, depression and power of liberation can be compared, for ex., with the mental somptuousness of Otto e mezzo (and with the same tint of science-fiction, btw.)

Electronic Arts Intermix wrote:
The Passing hauntingly travels the terrains of the conscious, the subconscious, and the desert landscapes of the Southwest, melding sleep, dreams and the drama of waking life into a stunning masterpiece. Viola, placed at the center of this personal exploration of altered time and space, represents his mortality in such forms as a glistening newborn baby, his deceased mother, and the artist himself, floating, submerged under water. Starkly yet poignantly rendered in black and white, The Passing re-enforces the notion of a permeable conduit between reality and surreality. An irrepressible soundtrack of Viola’s labored breathing in sleeping and wakefulness serves to pull the viewer through an otherworldly topography. Amy Taubin of the Village Voice hails The Passing as “awesomely beautiful” and deems Bill Viola “a world-class video artist.” She writes, “Some of the images… burst out of the darkness, shimmer and fade as radiant and ephemeral as shooting stars.”

Quote:
(…) video medium, fully used by Viola in its liquid materiality, its atomic restlessness and permanent scintilations and shimmerings, appears here as the perfect interface – the passing could be the camcorder too ? – between life and death as if the electronic vibrations of the image were the matter we’re made of… water bubbles, stardusts, seeds, germs, electric skies that travel all along the tape are here to remind us and mirror our mental structure.

http://nitroflare.com/view/B627C0E3B398999/The_passing_-_Bill_Viola_%281991%29.mkv

Language(s):Spectral sounds
Subtitles:Spectral

The post Bill Viola – The Passing (1992) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

« I was thinking about light and its relation to water and to life, and also its opposite – darkness or the night and death. I thought about how we have built entire cities of artificial light as refuge from the dark. »
Video treats light like water – it becomes a fluid on the video tube.
Water supports the fish like light supports man. Land is the death of the fish. Darkness is the death of man. »
Bill Viola, 1981

Hatsu-Yume (First Dream) is Bill Viola’s masterpiece, the greatest work by one of the most important video artists in the world. A spiritual allegory equating light and dark with life and death. Hatsu-Yume was produced in Japan in 1981 while Viola was artist-in-residence at the Sony Corporation. The title refers to Japanese folklore, wherein things done on the first day of a new year are significant. But the tape is not to be taken literally as a dream. For Viola, it’s more like the aboriginal concept of dreamtime, the creation of the world. That’s why, as a whole and in its parts, Hatsu-Yume progresses from darkness to light, stillness to motion, silence to sound, simplicity to complexity, nature to civilization. There are two interwoven themes: the dark water world of fish, and Buddhist rituals invoking the souls of dead ancestors. As in a dream, we frequently can’t tell if these wordless streams of image and sound are unfolding in real time, slow-motion or time-lapse. A work of extravagant pictorial beauty, Hatsu-Yume represents the most painterly use of light in the history of video. Form is content: the light that lures fish to their death protects human life. At once ominous, majestic, mystical and deeply spiritual, Hatsu-Yume is the work of a visionary poet of image and sound.Gene Youngblood

http://www.nitroflare.com/view/EFA2C214182F906/hatsu-yume.avi

Language(s):No dialogue

The post Bill Viola – Hatsu Yume (1981) first appeared on Cinema of the World.