Bill Viola on floating
Bill Viola17 quotes“For the Persian poet Rumi, each human life is analogous to a bowl floating on the surface of an infinite ocean. As it moves along, it is slowly filling with the water around it. That’s a metaphor for the acquisition of knowledge.”
More from Bill Viola
Live your Art. Don’t think about it.
Bill ViolaBill Viola 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 theres a feeling that life is interconnected, that theres life in stones and rocks and trees and dirt, like there is in us.
Bill ViolaBill Viola There is an invisible world out there, and we are living in it.
Bill ViolaBill Viola 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.
Bill ViolaBill Viola People have experiences in art museums today that they used to have in church.
Bill ViolaBill Viola Today, basically, on Wall Street, the big money is made by taking risks.
Bernard MadoffBernard Madoff Art has always had as its test in the long term the ability to speak to our innermost selves.
Bill ViolaBill Viola Everything we could call the contextualizing information. Representing that information is going to be the main issue in the years ahead – how the world meets the mind, not the eye.
Bill ViolaBill Viola It only takes a second for an impression to become a vision.
Bill ViolaBill Viola The human brain is probably one of the most complex single objects on the face of the earth; I think it is, quite honestly.
Bill ViolaBill Viola When I make my work, I am making what I hope to be something functional – a space for individual contemplation and reflection. I want my art to be useful.
Bill ViolaBill Viola I like to keep the meanings in my work flowing and open.
Bill ViolaBill Viola In the mid- to late ’60s to the mid-’70s, when I was a student, there was a major change in the thinking about what art can be and how art is made.
Bill ViolaBill Viola Because we live in an industrialized, fast-paced world that prefers that the soul remain asleep.
Bill ViolaBill Viola I don’t believe in originality in art. I think we exist on this earth to inspire each other, through our actions, through our deeds, and through who we are. We’re always borrowing.
Bill ViolaBill Viola The electronic image is not fixed to any material base and, like our DNA, it has become a code that can circulate to any container that will hold it, defying death as it travels at the speed of light.
Bill ViolaBill Viola
Original quotes
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I am the universe, and every possibility belongs to me.
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Rachel WolchinRachel Wolchin She now finds solace in vanilla-scented daydreams, as her soul sings away in a musical symphony of humid breaths and well-favored smiles.
Megan LaoMegan Lao Some things won’t change-some things can’t.
Julia Kellogg HenryJulia Kellogg Henry My blood is fifty percent alcohol the other half was you.
Chris AllchinChris Allchin Darling, you don’t fear love, you fear of loving wrong.
C.R. ElliottC.R. Elliott
Meet the writers
More on floating
When you freefall for 7,000 feet it doesn’t feel like you’re falling: it feels like you’re floating, a bit like scuba diving.
Benedict CumberbatchBenedict Cumberbatch We are bits of energy floating about in various guises, and when we die we rejoin the big cosmic soup of the universe.
Bat for LashesBat for Lashes From that day on it was as if Ren freed me from gravity. I was floating in the sky. Higher. Higher. Higher.
Ai YazawaAi Yazawa In the early ’90s I was floating somewhere between the Brat Pack/Andrew McCarthy/James Spader/Pretty In Pink kind of stuff and the alterna-pop look, crossed with a very distinct grunge sensibility.
Adam RichmanAdam Richman The floating world is the realm of the graphic designer
Aaron BetskyAaron Betsky
