American - Artist | January 25, 1951 -
Art is, for me, the process of trying to wake up the soul. Because we live in an industrialized, fast-paced world that prefers that the soul remain asleep.
Bill Viola
LiveArtSoulMeWorldWake Up
The velocity and knee-jerk response to events happening in real time that television brings us precludes any kind of reflection or contemplation and therefore analysis. And that's been one of the greatest political dangers in the post-war era. The idea of the reasoned, thoughtful response goes out of the window.
TimeReflectionWindowPolitical
The human brain is probably one of the most complex single objects on the face of the earth; I think it is, quite honestly.
BrainFaceThinkEarthHuman Brain
Vision connects you. But it also separates you. In my work, and my life, I feel a desire to merge. Not in terms of losing my own identity... but there's a feeling that life is interconnected, that there's life in stones and rocks and trees and dirt, like there is in us.
LifeWorkVisionLosingIdentity
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.
TimeExperienceBeginningSolitude
A lot of what making art is, is just being open, and empty. And putting yourself in the right place for things to, literally, come together.
ArtTogetherYourselfPlaceRight
This thing called the camera, that takes everything in equally, taught me a lot about how to see.
MeCameraEverythingSeeHowTakes
There's another world out there just beyond the world we're in. It's just on the other side of that translucent, semitransparent surface.
WorldBeyondOutSideSurfaceJust
If you look at landscape in historical terms, you realize that most of the time we have been on Earth as a species, what has fallen on our retina is landscape, not images of buildings and cars and street lights.
TimeLandscapeYouBuildingsLook
I would prefer to be forgotten, then rediscovered in a different age.
AgeForgottenDifferentWouldThen
The world is fine and everything is normal and then, bang, you just get bowled over by the wrathful deities somehow. That happens in very small ways and happens in very large ways when you have a major conflagration in the world. It's another cycle of existence of human beings.
WorldSmallYouHumanEverything
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.
MeDoctorSomeoneYouCryRun
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