[One of the reasons I admire Bill Viola’s art so much is that he is such a consummate artist. He was certainly one of the best, as such things are measured, of the video artists; a better artist than Nam June, I would say, though not necessarily a better thinker. Bill addressed the vast edifice of historic world art without irony. That took courage at a time when the dematerialization of art was a dominant idea in the avant-garde art world where video art was born. Bill references Giotto in ‘Going Forth’ but, if such things could be brought about, he could probably also talk to Giotto in terms that Giotto would understand.]

Going Forth by Day
Bill Viola
Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, 2002
by Davidson Gigliotti

Introduction

Going Forth by Day is a generous work.

We live in a world of intense visual and aural demands, and art, though it persists, is not first among them. Further, the art moment, both that moment that we have to give to art and the moment when the art resonates in our consciousness, tends to be very short. This partially a product of a tactical style of art-making that has evolved to accommodate our increasingly volatile culture, and partially a result of the demands on our disposable time. We see it, it does its trick (or it does not) and we move on. Like many aspects of our culture, art demands its minute, but it doesn't always give us much more than a minute, or a minute's worth, itself.

This makes it no less valid. Art is a moving target, difficult to acquire. We alter its purpose according to our current needs, from era to era, from artist to artist. We come to believe that any play in art is valid if it moves us in a way unique to that artwork's magic, invalid if it does not.

Bill Viola's Going Forth By Day is ambitious to give us more, and to give to a larger population than many artworks give or mean to give. He invades the public discourse in a direct and moving way. He addresses his cohort, the people he grew up with, with questions of death and faith, generous questions.

First, the formalities

Going Forth By Day is a multi-channel piece, seven channels of digital video projected hugely on four walls to make up five discrete images. All images relate to the subject of death, dying, resurrection, or transmigration.

The title is a translation from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, "a guide for the soul once it is freed from the darkness of the body to finally 'go forth by the light of the day'."

The actual Egyptian Book of the Dead doesn’t, in my opinion, help much in understanding this piece. That was a compendium of spells, chants, and prayers that the relatives would recite at the funeral, enclosing a copy of the text with the corpse in the tomb. Papyrus copies were widespread, with blank spaces for inserting the loved one's name; nearly every ancient Egyptian went to his or her reward or punishment accompanied by this documentation.

The standard English translation seems rendered in turgid liturgical language of which it is hard to make sense. The major contribution of the Egyptian Book of the Dead is probably the title "Going Forth by Day," which has a nice upbeat ring to it. Good choice when the subject is dying and death. Titles do set the tone in art.

A distinctive visual aura, a trick of lighting and staging, advances the overall religious quality of this piece. The images from Going Forth By Day seem projected in holy light, which renders them almost flat, like illustrations — Biblical illustrations, perhaps.

Each of the five image frames is stationary; there are no camera movements, no obvious edits. All events occur within the fixed frame. These images are projected on all four bare white walls of the gallery, two on one long wall and one each on the others, and though all are large projections, they vary in size and aspect ratio, illuminating the walls of the gallery with image.

They are murals, really. The formal reference, we are told, is to fresco painting; Giotto's frescos in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua are directly cited in the accompanying text.

In an age of total faith in Italy, when most could not read and did not travel, Giotto's frescos illustrated the Christian story from the birth of Mary to the Last Judgement, using images that all could read. It was a great painting but also a kind of inspirational literature and memory theater, a medieval Book of the Dead detailing the founding myths of Catholic faith.

There is no fixed core of faith today, or any body of holy images to which all can subscribe. But, still, the artist addresses to us propositions that involve faith, and visually cites Giotto's work at the Scrovegni Chapel as a precedent.

The temptation, given the reference to Giotto, is to try to tie the images together into a narrative. But, instead of one story, this artist seems to tell a selection of stories. With five images, he seems to be either offering us a choice or, at least, a review of our post-death options.

Well, we all have to die. Good of the artist to try and make us feel better about it with a Book of the Dead for our own time.

It's Not the World Most of Us Live In, But...

Image 1. Fire Birth, addresses that time between 'death and rebirth' — a time lost to our memory — when the 'human essence' gathers strength for rebirth after death. The light of raging fire of destruction penetrates the watery world where the essence prepares. This image was, in fact, the least obvious of the five, being partially obscured by a doorway through which visitors to the space entered. One seldom looks back when entering a room like this, though, so this is the image that usually gets contemplated last.

Image 2. The Path. This image dominated the space. It was long, perhaps 40 feet, and maybe 8 feet high; one long image of a parade of people walking on a path through a pine forest from one end of the frame to the other, lit by daylight filtered through trees. It is summer solstice, we are told, and as they walk we see that time has slowed down a bit to lend temporal significance to their march. It's easy to see that these are nice people. They are casually dressed, and many carry baggage, spiritual baggage we guess, on their way to meet their fate, whatever it might be. Fate is about right. They seem on their way to common destiny. One has a feeling that these people are heading for embarkation, leaving northern California for somewhere else!

Image 3. The Deluge, with its biblical title, leads us in the disaster movie direction. It is autumn equinox now, and we are standing in front of a white classical-looking building with a Palladian doorway framing a set of stairs going up into the interior. There are two second floor windows, and some blocked off windows on the ground floor with transoms or air conditioner vents.

People stand in front, pass back and forth, but after a time they begin to move in one direction only, off to the right, with the level of tension among the actors rising constantly. People rush by, carrying things, looking back in obvious attempts to escape something.

At the climax, water begins to spout from lower floor transoms, and a huge wave pours down the stairs and out the second floor windows into the street. The building is filling up with water under pressure, washing everything inside out through the door into the flooded streets. It is a violent episode.

Image 4. The Voyage. Giotto has some impact on the iconography as well as the display. He loved cutaway buildings, and the one in this scene could be a simplified version of the Virgin Mary's childhood home, as depicted by him in the episodes of Joachim and Anna in the Scrovegni Chapel. It is winter solstice now, and an old man lies dying, watched over by his son and daughter in law. Someone sits outside on the porch staring out over the lake, while below them on the shore a white-haired lady sits waiting while two workers load household furniture into a boat.

The kids leave, the old man dies, and reappears down on the beach, where he is embraced by the white-haired lady. Boat loaded, they embark and steam off for the Isles of the Blessed (yes, that is how they are described in the text) with all their furniture. In this universe you can, apparently, take it with you. The son and daughter-in-law race back and pound on the door, but they are too late.

I found this scene genuinely moving, particularly when the white-haired couple embrace and board the boat. I'm a sentimental guy. One hopes that the Blessed Isles do not prove to be a fantasy perpetrated by an unscrupulous Divine Realtor. That would be tragic, indeed.

"It is dawn on the morning of the vernal equinox. A team of rescue workers has been laboring all night to save people caught in a massive flash flood in the desert." One wonders, of course, if this is the same flood that we saw in image three. No. That was the winter solstice. I realize that there is no continuity from image to image intended at all. These are five separate events in five separate parallel universes. This universe seems to have fake-looking rocks, though. You never know with artists.

One of actors does not portray a rescue worker, but a tired and distraught survivor, looking at the devastation, and fearing that her son is lost. It's a strange scene, and it gets even stranger. The tired people move listlessly around, and eventually fall asleep, like the soldiers guarding Christ’s tomb. Then cued to events happening in the neighboring projection, Image 4 (The Voyage) a strange phenomenon begins to occur. As the son and daughter in law pound futilely at the door of their now dead father's house (while he and his wife head off for the Blessed Isles) in the neighboring image, the unappetizing little pool in front of the rescue workers begins to ferment. Bubbles start coming up and then a head appears and an upright body rises out of the pool and passes upward out of the frame at the top. The sleepers do not awake.

Being upbeat about death brings us only part way to the essence of this piece. What happens to us after we die certainly seems to be part of the subject. Another part of the subject could be (and, perhaps, should be) something about the point of human existence, a closely connected topic.

But it's hard get beyond the obvious; a (short) grand tour of accessible religious myth: the Flood, the Isles of the Blessed, Ascending into Heaven, The Path (is it the five-fold, three-fold or eight-fold path?), and, yes, Transmigration of the Soul with an interlude between birth and death. It's all so overt that it feels kind of silly asking, "What does it all mean?"

How much culture do you need to understand a Bill Viola artwork? We're told that much of Bill Viola's art is about birth, death and regeneration, and we can see that, but knowing that doesn't help much. What does it mean to stand in there and look at it and let it work its, well, magic on us without reference to other works he may have done or a set of notes to help explain it? The best image is The Path because it is certainly the most sensuous, most evocative and, at the same time, unpretentious. The endless procession of people moving across the long, long screen in slowish motion resolves itself into a kind of choreography that is worth watching for a time, evoking something of the kind of response that the artist is probably probing for. No fire or water, either.

Fire Birth is a real fire and water Viola image, which is not to say that it lacks power. A naked body floats within the frame, recovering from death, awaiting rebirth, we are told. The piece would have been less spectacular, certainly, but probably a bit more comprehensible if only these two images had been used.

But not more interesting. It has to be said that one enjoys sometimes the extremes of one's colleagues.

What are we to make of The Deluge, for instance, this massive flood pouring out from what looks like a bank building, preceded by rising panic of passers by? We know this artist, like many video artists, is a dab hand with water features. What's bizarre about this is that the flood comes out of the building — the building itself is the source of The Deluge. That is an interesting idea, though the execution of it instills no real dramatic tension, and, in fact, borders on the amusing. When the water starts pouring out of the building it's startling, but it's also a little like somebody jumping out of a cake.

Still, there is the thought that our troubles stem from our own nature, history and institutions, not from divine intervention. But there is an apocalyptic feel about this image that recalls some ideas with troubling credibility in America. I refer to the eschatological beliefs of religious enthusiasts who number in the millions: Bible Fundamentalists, Pentecostals, Charismatics, Dispensationists, Evangelists, and other religious divisions fervently engaged in preparing for the second coming. Though there are nuances of difference among them, they seem to share a belief in the imminent end of this world, and the beginning of the next, prepared for the faithful by a stern but basically well-meaning God. Armageddon, the Second Coming, the Anti-Christ, Satan, and other entities people their imaginations. Many of them are so sure that the end is nigh that they don't attach much importance to events in this world, seeing the deteriorating conditions of life on earth as mere evidence of the coming end. One wonders what the impact of this sort of thinking has on our national agendas, where many of those who call us their leaders also call themselves born again Christians.

But eschatology is a serious subject, too. After all, according to scientists who study these things, the earth will come to an end someday, burnt to a crisp with all aboard in supernova. Even the universe is an ongoing project, with a suggestion of possible destruction at the end. We may be halfway there already.

First Light, Image No. 5, somehow recalls a similar mood. When the human body comes flying out of the turgid pool, it could be illustrating another 'flight' (no pun intended) which has taken hold of the imaginations of many fundamentalists, The Rapture. One day, if all goes according to plan, millions of people will suddenly disappear from Earth, whisked off to heaven, or somewhere, by God, to the consternation and distress of those who are "left behind." A series of very popular novels, The Left Behind series, by Jerry Jenkins and Timothy LeHaye, chronicles the days of 'tribulation' when those who are left behind must war against the Anti-Christ and earn a place in Heaven.

I do not say that these images have any programmatic association with all this weird late-model Protestant theology, but I felt upon seeing it that only ten years ago this work could not have been thought of, by this artist or any another. It is as much the result of subliminal impact from without as inspiration from within. This piece follows as much as it leads.

Bill Viola's art, with its unapologetic and consistent overtones of spiritual exploration, participates in this zeitgeist. But he is not a surfer, riding the big ones for the thrill. The artist would have us view this work without irony, and he has a right to ask this of us.

Some strains of video art were born in irony. One thinks immediately of Wolf Vostell's and Nam June Paik's early work. Vostell's video art contained a necessary polemic against television as it was constituted in his day but had not much to do with reclaiming and revitalizing the medium of analog video. But other strains did. Certain early video installations — Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider's Wipe Cycle, 1969, Beryl Korot's Dachau, 1974, and Text and Commentary, 1977, and Mary Lucier's Dawn Burn,1975, the subversion inherent in them is not the blade of irony, but an attempt to illuminate another path. These were among the main people doing, and thinking about, multi-channel video installations in New York in those years. We've certainly come full circle from that to this. Thank you, Bill.

As I stated at the beginning, Going Forth by Day is a generous work. A work is generous when it sets our consciousness, and perhaps our unconsciousness also, free; free to consider those contents within ourselves that we otherwise avoid or misplace, free to consider anything.

So much of art is serendipitous. I know well that often what we present to the world as art is a product of many kinds of mental and physical labor, and that the result which brings all these labors together is often surprising to ourselves, the artists, when we finally see it whole. I'm sure there was much in Going Forth by Day that surprised Bill Viola when he first saw it all at once.

DG/end