Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House

Bill Viola's video installation...shows
A heavy wooden chair stands empty in front of a TV monitor. The monitor shows a man in close-up as he struggles to stay awake and alert. The room is silent. Headphones on the chair reveal his inner body sounds of breathing and swallowing, with multiple voices heard in the background engaged in stream-of-consciousness chatter. At random intervals, the man is struck violently from behind by an unseen figure, causing a loud explosion of sound to momentarily burst out from two loudspeakers in the room.


Bill Viola's video installation series "Buried Secrets" (1995) is so disturbing that its images and associations still float into its viewers consciousness the way the disturbing parts of dreams resurface unbidden, reminding one of anxieties, unresolved conflicts, deep fears. Viola's installations often deliberately blur the boundaries between self and other. This is most evident in "Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House" (1982), where the spectator seems to merge with Viola as he gazes from a monitor into the viewer's eyes, their separate identities disintegrating as the spectator experiences through amplified sounds the trauma of sudden blows to Viola's head. The installation creates the jarring disorientation of seemingly shared consciousness, and it also demonstrates the controlled rage that has been a root of Viola's art.