Beginning November 13, ΕΜΣΤ inaugurates a new autumn season of CineFIX screenings in the Museum’s Mezzanine Screening Room, presenting a selection of films, videos, and audiovisual works that extend the success of its summer outdoor cinema programme.
TICKETS
General Admission tickets 4 euros, available at the Museum’s Ticket Desk and online in the system below.
Online pre-sale of tickets ends on the day of the screening at 17:00. After the end of the pre-sale, the remaining available tickets will be available at the Museum’s Ticket Desk:
NOVEMBER
Thursday 13 November | 20:00
Bill Viola
I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like, 1986
89′
As part of the public programme of the exhibition Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives, ΕΜΣΤ will screen one of the most significant video works by internationally renowned artist Bill Viola, I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like (1986).
The work’s title derives from the Rig Veda, the Sanskrit spiritual text that charts a journey through birth, consciousness, primordial existence, intuition, knowledge, rational thought, and faith—culminating in a transcendent reality “beyond the laws of physics.” Through a sequence of powerful, emblematic images and allegorical passages, Viola stages a profound quest for self-knowledge achieved through an awareness of the Other, embodied here in a shamanistic vision of animal consciousness.
Structured in five parts—Il Corpo Scuro (The Dark Body), The Language of the Birds, The Night of Sense, Stunned by the Drum, and The Living Flame—the video unfolds as a metaphysical journey of rational and intuitive thought, from the natural world to spiritual ritual. Viola’s poetic exploration of subject and object, observer and observed, and his search for knowledge of the self, culminate in an indelible visual metaphor: the artist’s reflection in the pupil of an owl’s eye.
© Texts: Excerpted from the EAI Online Catalogue (http://www.eai.org) Edited by Lory Zippay
BIOGRAPHY
Bill Viola (1951-2024) was a pioneer in the fields of new media, video, and installation art. For over 50 years his visionary environments, defined by immersive video and soundscapes, focused on the fundamental human experiences of birth, death, and the unfolding of consciousness. Viola’s decelerated moving images shifted viewers’ sense of perception and awareness to reveal the inner states of awareness. Coming of age alongside the development of video, Viola experimented with the new technologies to explore expressive possibilities of this new medium. At the same time, through his study of the history of art and great masters, as well as research into cultural rituals all over the world, he came to realize that art can express true compassion striving to make work that embodied the concept of transformation. Viola played a key role in assuring video became a vital form of contemporary art.
