Bill Viola recalls the TV LAB

Artist Bill Viola's video art is exhibited at James Cohan Gallery, 533 West 26th St., through Dec 19, 2009. I urge you to see this remarkable show of new and classic Bill Viola works. In an interview on the occasion of his exhibition, Viola spoke about the importance of the TV LAB:

Viola: The first time I did something at WNET was in 1976; I did a piece called Four Songs that had to do with the passage of time, death, resurrection, but in a slightly different way than I deal with those topics now. It was broadcast on television. The first time my work was seen by large numbers of people, it was not in a museum, it was on NET, then it got syndicated and went to other public TV stations. I was involved with the TV Lab from around ‘75 thru maybe ‘81. That’s how I learned how to edit with high end professional equipment....

...What’s extraordinary about the TV Lab—it was a creative space with no strings attached, not for television producers, not even cinema directors—but for visual artists to explore this then-new medium of television. So it was literally a lab and a workshop, and a lot of things were made there that never saw the light of day, as in many artists’ studios. Artists don’t show all those paintings they’re doing behind closed doors. Some of them even burn them or throw them in the garbage. So it had that creative unknown connected with it. It was kind of this wide open creativity, that is ironically, in the age of the internet, limited.

But it’s not limited by big technology; it’s limited by the person who’s maybe seen too many movies as a kid, who presumes that you should put the camera this way, or you should have a cut here. And the idea of these crazy artists who are just on the edge and are breaking rules instead of following them… that’s what’s under threat right now. The flip side of that is unbridled creativity, someone who fundamentally just doesn’t know what they want to do, because they don’t want to invest their own inner being in the deepest way human beings can, which is the source of all great art.