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BILL
VIOLA: Video Art
Bill Viola
came to the production of "Happy End" that was produced
by MOCA and the Goethe Institute. For production, director Randee
Trabitz hired Daniel Marlos and Fredrik
Nilsen to make amazing films, shot on a hand crank, 16mm
Bolex Camera. The films looked the period, 1928, and were so much
fun to make. After creating the silent films for "Happy End"
with Daniel and Frederick, I didn't think I would ever get a chance
to do silent film again.
Bill Viola came to up to Randee and I after the show and said: "I
really liked the production. I work in film and video too." Then
producer Julie Lazar introduced him to us and I flipped
because I'd seen his retrospective at the SF Museum of Modern Art
and found him completely inspirational.
Two weeks later, Bill called me on the phone to say that he had been
commissioned by the National Gallery of London to do a video based
on Hieronymus Bosch painting "Christ Mocked." He was developing
a piece that would be based on "gesture…and intense emotions..."
and asked if I would come down to his studio in Long Beach.
For the next 2 and 1/2 years, I worked on what was to become the "Passions"
series which involved a kind of ad hoc repertory company of LA based
actors, performance artists and musicians including John Fleck,
John Malapede, Ken Roht, Nathalie
Canessa & Tom Fitzpatrick -- creating
intensely emotional gestural performances that were filmed, edited
and presented in Museums all over the world. I was in a total of eleven
different settings and each one was an amazing work experience because
we created, performed and filmed each piece over a one to two week
period. I view these pieces as performances because there are no edits
and no script.
The Passions premiered at JP Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA and went
on to the National Gallery of London, England, October-January, 2004,
and will be at Fundación "la Caixa", Madrid, Spain,
February 4, 2005 - May 15, 2005.
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