Kirjahaku

In 2004, the opera scene was taken by storm by the ground-breaking production of Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde in Los Angeles. This book offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the visionary American artist Bill Viola created four hours of video as a visual complement to this profound psychological drama. It also tells the story of its commissioning by the then Paris Opera director Gerard Mortier, who pushed the boundaries of what opera could be by inviting a trinity of California-based creatives to re-imagine a Tristan und Isolde for our times. Having just opened the now iconic Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, this was a bold project for the Los Angeles Philharmonic to take on, but it was one which catapulted them into the world of music and breath-taking visuals. The fully staged opera that resulted has been seen in Paris, Toronto, Madrid, Tokyo, Kobe, and concert versions in LA, New York, Rotterdam, London, Helsinki, Stockholm, and St Petersburg, and the revolutionary four-hour video and visuals created by Bill Viola to accompany this opera lives on through this beautifully illustrated book. Distributed for Mercatorfonds

The Museum der Moderne Salzburg is dedicating a comprehensive exhibition to the US-American video and installation artist Bill Viola, offering an overview of his oeuvre that now stretches over fifty years. Viola is regarded across the world as a pioneer of video and media art. The accompanying book Bill Viola in Dialogue. Selected Writings and Lectures contains, in addition to Bill Viola's central texts (among others: The Porcupine and the Car, 1981; Sight Unseen, 1982; The Sound of One Line Scanning, 1984; The Body Asleep, 1992; Presence and Absence, 2007), as well as source texts by John Cage, Peter Campus, Hollis Frampton, David Tudor, and Peter Sellars. The volume can thus be genuinely useful for understanding Bill Viola's work. And his works, some of which are expansive and immersive, are visually seductive but at the same time highly rational and deeply intuitive. He focuses his attention on the specific interactions that occur between his images and those who observe them. In Viola's opinion, his work does not unfold its effects solely on the video screen but also, and above all, in the minds of those who have experienced it.

Chosen to represent the United States at the 46th Venice Biennale, Bill Viola, a New York artist living on the West Coast, is recognized internationally for his work in video and sound installations. This book brings together a selection of essays, notebook entries, drawings, and descriptions of projects that map Viola's personal course through the readings, observations, experiments, and associations that form the groundwork for his art. Each work illustrated is accompanied by a description by the artist, as well as comments on the work's origins from the artist's notebooks.For the last 25 years, Viola has used innovative multimedia technologies to explore the phenomena of sense perception as a language of the body and avenue to self-knowledge, integrating many disciplines and philosophies to reveal contemporary art's relevance to the modern world. His views have deep roots in mysticism, poetry, philosophy, Eastern art, shamanism, Chinese Taoism, Sufism, and Zen Buddhism. Viola's chief concerns today are to draw attention to the upset ecological balance of nature by focusing on the connection between our inner and outer lives, on the conception of the self as part of the whole.Published in association with the Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London.

Questa seconda edizione di Cominciamenti (la prima del 1988) manifesta una attitudine, recente, a rileggere il percorso della video arte, sia attraverso studi che ricostruiscono storie /eventi significativi, che interventi di restauro conservativo di opere video, restituiti alla fruizione pubblica, come anche progetti di censimento e schedatura degli archivi di videoarte. Il paesaggio disegnato da Cominciamenti ci conduce su temi di cui siamo pi consapevoli oggi rispetto a trenta anni fa, basilari per la costituzione di una storia della videoarte in Italia, ossia di un repertorio di opere preservate e riconosciute come bene di interesse culturale. Emerge quindi il tema che oggi siamo abituati a delineare come archivio, di cui caso emblematico quello di art/tapes 22.Altro tema di riflessione che Cominciamenti stimola la verifica del ruolo che artisti e critici hanno giocato nel percorso della videoarte, premettendo che non stato affatto scontato definire artista, n tantomeno regista il realizzatore di opere video, dato che eravamo mossi dal bisogno di prendere le distanze sia dal cinema che dalle arti visive - con le quali pure il video era implicato -, preferendo la definizione di autore che riecheggiava la dimensione del film sperimentale in cui la produzione era organicamente in mano, dalla ideazione al montaggio, alla figura del filmmaker/su cui si ricalcava la definizione di videomaker. dall'introduzione alla seconda edizione ] Valentina Valentini insegna arti performative e arti elettroniche e digitali, Sapienza, Universit di Roma. Ha dedicato vari studi storici e teorici al teatro del Novecento: Nuovo teatro Made in Italy (Bulzoni,2015), pubblicato in inglese da Routledge (New Theater in Italy: 1963-2013) e il relativo sito web; Drammaturgie sonore (Bulzoni, 2012), Mondi, corpi, materie.Teatri del secondo Novecento (B. Mondadori, 2007 in inglese pubblicato da Performance Research Books, 2014); alle interferenze fra teatro e nuovi media (Teatro in immagine, Bulzoni, 1987) e alle arti elettroniche (Medium senza Medium, Bulzoni 2015; Le pratiche e Le storie del video, Bulzoni, 2003). Pubblica su riviste nazionali e internazionali (Performance Research, PAJ, Biblioteca Teatrale, Close Up, Imago). E' responsabile per Alfabeta2 del Teatro e del network www.sciami.com.