Be my guest: Bill Viola and Gaston Bachelard

 

BE MY GUEST is a venue for others to share their art; I assemble between creators in my sitting room. Linear time and locality are not relevant.

Bill Viola is speaking about his video artwork, Ocean Without a Shore – exhibited at Venice Biennale 2007. He points out the link between the dead and the living; He connects the worlds through water in a church; People are passing through a threshold of water, and perhaps they are transformed spiritually.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-V7in9LObI

I am thinking about Jesus at Lake of Galilee, less than an hour from my home, two thousand and years ago, walking on water, making miracles, and still is – to many pilgrims who come here.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnGSaybQzbc&feature=related

The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, reflects on aspects of water as Matter in his book Water and Dreams.

Water is truly the transitory element. It is the essential, ontological metamorphosis between fire and earth.  A being dedicated to water is being in a flux. He dies every minute; something of his substance is constantly falling away.” [p.6]

Sailing upon the Nile, was THE transformatory journey of the Pharaohs to the next world of the dead. As mostly desert – water was deeply rooted in the ancient Egyptian culture. Their votive boats are the ones I never miss in any archaeological museum.

Model of a Boat, Tomb of the chancellor. Nakhti at Assiout, (12th Dynasty)

Even though we are fragile and in constant change, there is also a thread of repetition within humankind; The cycle of good and evil, the knowledge and erasing it, all are in moving in an endless spiral.

I wish to stream among a group of artists, such as Bill Viola, and cooperatively to revive ancient Alexandria’s library, as a metaphor of the human richness and ability to do good; To sail together to an imaginary transformational horizon and recreate a universal idea that was once a part of the world but was destroyed.

I wish to add the transformational water element to the library of Alexandria that was burnt by fire.

To alchemically heal and revive.

Reviving  Ancient Alexandria library Proposal for international project, 2012

Unfolding of Alexandria’s story here.

 

2 Responses

  1. It turns out to be a lucky decision to couple the creation of Bill Viola with the ideas of our dear acquaint Gaston Bachelard. They both have their own – completely different – method to approach the archetypal, “watery” element of human experience.
    But then it is – as so often – also accompanied by your original, surprising and illuminating reflection that is caused by your countering the subject matter you are used to present.

  2. מים באיסטמבול

    השתקפו בשלולית ענפיו של העץ
    ככלי דם בבדיקת אקו לב.
    גזעים רטובים על מרצפת השיש
    דימו ציור במבוק ענף..
    קרעי עולם הפוך על מרצפת משבצת
    לאן הולכים עכשיו.?
    מחט המצפן תראה את הדרך
    תנגן לנו שיר חדש.
    חנה

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