Bill Viola

Revolution is something that actually starts in individual hearts.

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For the Persian poet Rumi, each human life is analogous to a bowl floating on the surface of an infinite ocean. As it moves along, it is slowly filling with the water around it. That’s a metaphor for the acquisition of knowledge. When the water in the bowl finally reaches the same level as the water outside, there is no longer any need for the container, and it drops away as the inner water merges with the outside water. We call this the moment of death. That analogy returns to me over and over as a metaphor for ourselves.

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I hope we’ll be able to see that in our lifetime: the end of the camera! When I’m in Paris, I’ll buy a big bottle of champagne and I’ll save it for that day, for the day when they’ll be no more camera.

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A doctor once told me that with crying you aren’t sure what its derivation is. If someone comes at you with a knife, you don’t cry: you scream, you try to run. When it’s over and you’re OK, that’s when you cry.

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The human brain is probably one of the most complex single objects on the face of the earth; I think it is, quite honestly.

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Since the time of St. Jerome, it was mandatory for any kind of scholar or thinker to spend time out in the desert in solitude. It’s no coincidence that the desert has been a major part of the visionary or mystical experience from the beginning of time.

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Video artists being at the low end of the totem pole economically, one of the ways we survive is to go around showing work and giving these talks.

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I came of age at the end of the 1960s, just when video was also coming into the world. Companies such as Sony and Panasonic were starting to market it and we artists immediately knew how it could be used.

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I think we’re in an age where artists really have an incredible range of materials at their command now. They can use almost anything from household items – Jackson Pollock used house paint – to, you know, advanced computer systems, to good old oil paint and acrylic paint.

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I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images.

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Human beings have always been creative. The guys who were making the pyramids, and archaeological research has showed us this, had little figurines made by the workers, to express their devotion to their god.

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When I make my work, I am making what I hope to be something functional – a space for individual contemplation and reflection. I want my art to be useful.

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I would prefer to be forgotten, then rediscovered in a different age.

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Because we live in an industrialized, fast-paced world that prefers that the soul remain asleep.

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The electronic image is not fixed to any material base and, like our DNA, it has become a code that can circulate to any container that will hold it, defying death as it travels at the speed of light.

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Emotions are the key to many aspects of life. They are precisely the elements that make human beings human. I think the fact that emotions have been reduced and put off to the side in intellectual work, particularly in the 20th Century, is tragic.

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In the mid- to late ’60s to the mid-’70s, when I was a student, there was a major change in the thinking about what art can be and how art is made.

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The fundamental aspect of video is not the image, even though you can stand in amazement at what can be done electronically, how images can be manipulated and the really extraordinary creative possibilities. For me the essential basis of video is the movement – something that exists at the moment and changes in the next moment.

Revolution is something that actually starts in individual hearts.

I hope we’ll be able to see that in our lifetime: the end of the camera! When I’m in Paris, I’ll buy a big bottle of champagne and I’ll save it for that day, for the day when they’ll be no more camera.

A doctor once told me that with crying you aren’t sure what its derivation is. If someone comes at you with a knife, you don’t cry: you scream, you try to run. When it’s over and you’re OK, that’s when you cry.

The human brain is probably one of the most complex single objects on the face of the earth; I think it is, quite honestly.

Since the time of St. Jerome, it was mandatory for any kind of scholar or thinker to spend time out in the desert in solitude. It’s no coincidence that the desert has been a major part of the visionary or mystical experience from the beginning of time.

Video artists being at the low end of the totem pole economically, one of the ways we survive is to go around showing work and giving these talks.

I came of age at the end of the 1960s, just when video was also coming into the world. Companies such as Sony and Panasonic were starting to market it and we artists immediately knew how it could be used.

I think we’re in an age where artists really have an incredible range of materials at their command now. They can use almost anything from household items – Jackson Pollock used house paint – to, you know, advanced computer systems, to good old oil paint and acrylic paint.

I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images.

Human beings have always been creative. The guys who were making the pyramids, and archaeological research has showed us this, had little figurines made by the workers, to express their devotion to their god.

When I make my work, I am making what I hope to be something functional – a space for individual contemplation and reflection. I want my art to be useful.

I would prefer to be forgotten, then rediscovered in a different age.

Because we live in an industrialized, fast-paced world that prefers that the soul remain asleep.

The electronic image is not fixed to any material base and, like our DNA, it has become a code that can circulate to any container that will hold it, defying death as it travels at the speed of light.

Emotions are the key to many aspects of life. They are precisely the elements that make human beings human. I think the fact that emotions have been reduced and put off to the side in intellectual work, particularly in the 20th Century, is tragic.

In the mid- to late ’60s to the mid-’70s, when I was a student, there was a major change in the thinking about what art can be and how art is made.

People have experiences in art museums today that they used to have in church.

Live your Art. Don’t think about it.