9/4/2020 Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House | The MIT Press

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Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House

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Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House

Writings 1973-1994

By Bill Viola (/contributors/bill-viola)

Edited by Robert Violette (/contributors/robert-violette)

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The larger struggle we are witnessing today...[is] an ecological drama where the outcome
rests not only on our realization that the natural physical environment is one and the same as
our bodies, but that nature itself is a form of Mind.
Bill Viola

Overview Author(s) Praise

Summary
Chosen to represent the United States at the 46th Venice Biennale, Bill Viola, a New York artist living
internationally for his work in video and sound installations. This book brings together a selection of
drawings, and descriptions of projects that map Viola's personal course through the readings, obse
associations that form the groundwork for his art. Each work illustrated is accompanied by a descri
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 the body and avenue to self-knowledge, integrating many disciplines and philosophies to reveal c
modern world. His views have deep roots in mysticism, poetry, philosophy, Eastern art, shamanism, C
Buddhism. Viola's chief concerns today are to draw attention to the upset ecological balance of nat
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.

Paperback
$24.95 T
ISBN: 9780262720250
304 pp. | 6.375 in x 9.25 in
90 B&W illus.
December 1995

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