Bill Viola - Rites of Passage

I was excited to find this video excerpt of The Messenger on YouTube. Bill Viola's piece excited me when I first saw it and a continued engagement with his art over ment years now, led to my MA dissertation which you can read here which I called "Rites of Passage: A Theological Reflection on the Contemporary Video Artwork of Bill Viola.

The summary of the project reads: It is clear that our culture is experiencing a time of crisis. Some have put this down to the death throes of Modernity giving way to Postmodernity. This paradigm-shift has led to the death of meaning, unregulated interpretation, and assertions of the will to power which disregard the Other. It is also a time where the sublime is re-presented. The postmodern sublime arises out of the gap between conception and imagination. There is a yearning to be able to bridge that gap, but not by longing for a non-existent Golden Age, but rather by re-presenting the unrepresentable with a disfigured form of the signifier itself. This whole project may be put down to a corporate crisis of Self.

It seems that the struggle we are witnessing today is not between moral beliefs or the legal system and individual freedom; it is between our inner and outer lives, and our bodies are the arenas where this is being played out. I will show that the mind-body problem is reaching crescendo latterly, as an ecological drama where the realisation that the environment and our bodies are one and the same. This ‘making strange’, which implies a distance between subject and object, has been the basis of Viola’s work. It is at this point of risk where art and science may be unified with all created activities. It is a point of theoria, transfiguration, and personal transformation where art recreates the viewer and moves us beyond the postmodern flux of the self.

Viola’s work is a meditation on states of consciousness and being in which dream and reality are indistinguishable but where what lingers in the mind is a state of confusion in terms of what is seen and in registration of external data. Viola demonstrates that states of mind and vision are one and the same.

I will show that a critique Viola’s work is based on the understanding of the confusion in postmodern culture between transcendence and the sublime. I will also show that the anthropology that underlies his work, and postmodern culture in general, is a sense of abjection – that is repulsion of the Self and the Other. This does not lead to a theoria, but rather a self-deluded postmodern narcissism in the guise of theoria. This is not in line with a Biblical understanding of the self, based on the Imago Dei in Genesis.

Whilst his work revolves around spiritual themes, I will show that this fascination with the Other is due to the tension in the Self. A critique of Viola’s project will involve a reclamation of the power of the Incarnation that incorporates the Other in the Self, which may heal the wound of gaping abjection in our culture. (I can't believe that I wrote this...???)

His work gets all the more beautiful and dramatic...



Truly an artist and his art in a liminal space

Gen X meets the fourth Century or “Who’s afraid of the Incarnation?”

I often lament the perceived exclusiveness of “doctrine” and “spirituality” or between “religion” and “relationship.” It is strange to me that because something is traditional or put in religious terms that is no longer relevant to the contemporary, unchurched, and unsaved individual. Two of my favorite books I think show otherwise. The first was written by a poster child of Generation X. The second was written by fourth century saint. One cannot get much farther apart than that.

Douglas Coupland wrote a collection of short stories entitled “Life After God.” These stories speak to the first generation that was raised without religion. Now, they make up much the professional work force. The current generation of 20-somethings is no more raised with religion than the Gen X’s were. I still find many of these stories heart-wrenching and emotional. One of my favorite quotes is “we have religious impulses – we must- and yet into what cracks do these impulses flow in a world without religion?”

Saint Athanasius was a famous saint of the fourth century. His book,” De Incarnatione Verbi Dei” (On the Incarnation of the Word of God) is seminal classic of Christian thought. Athanasius wrote it to expound on and explain the Incarnation against the doctrines of Arius which denied, among other things, the idea that Jesus Christ was both 100% God and 100% human. Clearly, one does not get more “religious” than this. I found this book incredibly easy to read. I find very little except scripture to be as equally inspiring.

Despite their vastly different cultures and times, both of these authors talk about God using the same simile. One uses it to describe those religious impulses with nowhere to flow. The other uses it describe the dramatic immanence of God in the world.

I was wondering what the ceremony itself would be like –it was like wondering about a coronation- of the old king being dead –long live the new king. I was wondering about trumpeters raising their horns, of the crowds-of the world somehow becoming new again in the process.

-Life After God

Here is the second quote.

For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word’s indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all. You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honoured, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled…

De Incarnatione

These two passages hardly need further commentary. It is as if Coupland says, “I want God to be like a king. I want him excite and inspire us the same way those mythical just rulers do.” St Athanasius says, “God is like a king. In fact, he is the only just and right king. Through the Incarnation, he lived among us and continues to work in our world to this day.”

It should not be said, I think, that religious doctrines and old tomes aren’t relevant to contemporary culture. The parallels here are far too close. The spiritual experiences of Christians are never far from the doctrines we expound.

Clearly, I have shown my Christian hipster stripes with this blog, but thanks for reading.