In Surrender (2001), two crying figures shot in super slow motion dip their heads in water. The woman in the pale dress gently slips her wrists from their bonds.Ī still from Bill Viola’s Surrender, 2001 The other three just raise their eyes with restful looks on their faces.
The man doused in water is slowly raised up into the light. Eventually these forces are becalmed, and the four figures are bathed in beatific light. Lastly a man buried in a mound of dirt is uncovered as the dirt rises from him in a column, as though sucked by an ever-strengthening updraft. A woman in a pale dress, who is hanging by her wrists with her feet roped to the floor, is blown about by a strong wind. Fire rains down on a man sitting in a chair that is slowly engulfed in flames. As he is soaked he draws his arms up so that he hangs by his feet in cruciform. In one, a man curled on the floor with a rope around his ankles is gradually hauled upside down and showered in water. The videos play simultaneously and on a constant loop throughout the day, but are stopped during services in the cathedral. They are intended to focus our attention, Viola says, on “our capacity to bear pain, hardship and even death in order to remain faithful to values, beliefs and principles.” Each screen shows a silent video, a little over seven minutes long, of a person undergoing a highly aestheticized ordeal involving, respectively, earth, air, fire, and water-all captured with sumptuous visual effects and all withstood in serene and saintly forbearance. Four plasma screens are arranged in a row on a sleek metal stand by the architect Norman Foster. Paul’s Cathedral in London, just a few feet from the high altar, and is designed as a kind of altarpiece. It is being shown as a permanent exhibit in St.
Martyrs, a new work by the American video artist Bill Viola, is difficult to take as seriously as it takes itself. A view of Bill Viola’s video installation Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) on display at St.
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