Description
Writes Viola: "A succession of individual images focusing on mortality, decay and disintegration, are delineated by long, slow fades to black. The image sequences — fruit falling from a tree, a candle being extinguished, a family having a flash photograph taken — appear as a series of openings or momentary glimpses into nature's essential gestures which, like thoughts, are destined to fade and themselves disintegrate into obscurity and oblivion. Peak moments illuminate the dim confines of memory and forgetting with a kind of universal light, as a baby emerges into the world before our eyes, and the camera-eye moves along a dark concrete tunnel towards the rigid steel bars of a locked gate, where it finally passes through and out into the bright world, liberated by the consuming, saturated white light of its own overexposure."
Conceived, Directed and Edited by Bill Viola. Production Coordinator: Donna Matorin. Production Manager: Robert Campbell. Tape Editor: Andrew Hanges. Executive Producer: Pere Roca. Produced for IMATCO/ATANOR.
Exhibition & Distribution Conditions
SCREENING REQUIREMENTS for museum or gallery presentation:
The video should be presented as cinema. Projection in a dedicated, darkened gallery is strongly preferred. Accompanying floor plans and technical specifications regarding projection equipment is appreciated. Videos must be shown in original 4:3 aspect ratio, either using projector settings, as available, or pillarboxed with black masking.
Seating must be provided for the audience, and works must be shown according to a published schedule, not presented as an automatically repeating loop. Works cannot be incorporated into looping programs with other titles. Audio must be handled through a separate stereo sound system (amplifier and two speakers).
Please contact the EAI office (info@eai.org) for further information regarding monitor displays. Presentation on monitor may be permitted in certain instances, but the use of headphones or sound through built-in speakers is not permitted.
