Bill Viola: Hatsu-Yume (First Dream)

Bill Viola is regarded as one of the most important pioneers of video art—his work has been exhibited in major museums and galleries in America and abroad for decades. The hour-long 1981 piece Hatsu-Yume (First Dream), one of his best known, features no narrative per se, just a succession of wordless sequences that Viola taped during a stay in Japan, juxtaposing light and dark images symbolic of life and death. The segments often focus on a stationary object as light and shadow play over it (and people move about), or capture shafts of light across darkened landscapes, or spotlight water (a symbol of life) glistening in moonlight—all deliberately paced, and at certain points presented in slow-motion or repeated. The effect is designed to be hallucinatory and mesmerizing, a reflection on the Japanese legend suggesting that what one experiences on the first day of the New Year carries special significance. Hatsu-Yume, a milestone of sorts in the development of video art, certainly belongs in any serious collection devoted to the form or to Viola's work. However, considered as a standalone piece, the languid, enigmatic mood eventually grows wearisome, even though some of the individual images are quite beautiful (in other words, this could serve as the equivalent of a dreamlike screensaver, but is unlikely to invite multiple viewings). Optional. [Note: also newly available are Bill Viola: I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like and Bill Viola: The Passing.] Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)