The Bill Viola Exhibition at the James Cohan Gallery is a collection of two video instillations. The one that intrigued me the most was the piece called “The Sleepers.”
Entering the dark instillation is a room with several barrels. The barrels have water in them with videos on screens playing at the bottom. Looking from further away and not directly into the barrel, the barrels give off a blue glow that almost looks like it’s from a sci-fi movie. In each barrel a different sleeper is shown in a video that seems to be going on forever. The only light in the room are the ones coming from each screen in each barrel.
I decided to write about this installation because it reminded me of a performance piece. It made me feel like I was in a dream watching other people sleep through a small circle. I also think he had to loop the people sleeping so it would play over and over again never having an end. There’s also something about looking into a barrel filled with water to see a person sleeping at the bottom. I am not exactly sure why he decided to have sleeping people being shown at the bottom, but it makes me think of dreaming and how it is non-linear and doesn’t necessarily have an end or beginning. Also, the story in a dream is not exactly clear and concise, which may be why he chose to use water and to make the film be in black and white.
Speed, Sequence, Composition, and Repetition are all things that he considers in his art work. He chooses to have something keep playing in one frame over a long period of time. This is a conscious decision he made when producing the video and putting it in this type of setting. The speed is slow, the water is still, the barrels look heavy, everything is interconnected somehow through the decisions he made in making this piece affective.
