The Australian Centre for the Moving Image is situated upon the same site that was once occupied by the Princess Bridge railway station. While descending a stairwell that leads into the A.C.M.I. gallery, the memory of train trips that began here pre-1997 are replaced by the anticipation of a metaphorical journey on a raft. Bill Viola's video art-work portrays a studio interior populated by twenty people standing together in a group. African-Americans and Hispanics, Anglo-Saxons and Indians, Asians, Africans, the rich and the poor, but notably, no children. This diverse group of individuals might be waiting for a train to arrive at a platform that no longer exists. Alternatively, Viola may request we consider our tenuous position within a global demographic. A composition in crisis, we, the 6.8 billion people who populate the world, are simultaneously the perpetrators of this crisis, and, its victims.
The mildly disturbing sound of urban wildlife is heard off-screen. Disgruntled dogs bark at nothing in particular, while startled birds screech in response to the threat of city life as it hums beneath their wings. A woman of Hindi appearance intervenes. Unlike others in the group, there is purpose in her presence as she dissects a path between each by-stander. Prompting a recomposition of the image, she is a forthright yet irritating figure intent upon addressing an Asian woman at centre of the group. The sounds of urban wildlife heard earlier transmute toward a tumult that gathers momentum. The two women greet and subsequently embrace. As they do, others around them raise their arms in feeble gestures of defence. Bodies constrict, and the composition finds new form as it contracts in order to protect itself from that which remains unseen. Violent jets of water perpetrated from left and right engulf this global gathering. A woman of African appearance has a book blown from her hand. She contorts toward the floor while others attempt to resist the tempestuous onslaught. Individuals collide as a business woman is dispossessed of her handbag. While a vagrant collapses at the woman's feet and is prostrate upon the floor. High definition video curtailed to a miniscule speed replaces the painter's brush as the texture of this composition refracts, and coagulates toward multifaceted meaning. Viola's work has been criticised as pretentious. But on-screen, as the deluge of water recedes, it is clear that The Raft succeeds where others believe Viola's previous work may have failed. Battered and bruised, traumatised yet overjoyed, 'the flood' has risen. Humanity may have been reconfigured, but it has prevailed.
In one simple image, this work conceptualises the crisis confronting human beings in the 21st century. Earthquake and tsunami obliterate communities and kill thousands of people. Tension between the U.S. and Asia is manifest as a shift in superpower status toward China and India. Famine relative to global population is an ulcerous entity upon the conscience of first world over-abundance, while organised religion is for many people, bereft of meaning. Lacerated by prejudice, sexual deviancy, and fanaticism, the palpable threat of arbitrary annihilation is an existential possibility. But Viola's concerns are not just sociopolitical, environmental, religious and ontological. The aesthetic mood of The Raft is at once bleak and magnificent, indifferent and uplifting. An unsuspecting group of people is subjected to the catastrophic power of an elemental force. Each writhes and twists in a particular manner. The texture of the group is transformed. Colour and shape are rendered incomprehensible by a sustained saturation of water. This deluge is replaced by a trickle, and then the forecast renewal of affirmative drops of water. Individuals grasp for one another in an effort to reconcile themselves with the aftermath of a catastrophic event. The inherent benevolence of human beings predominates. What prevents each individual from oblivion is an innate concern for another person. Estranged from ourselves, oblivious to each others pain, cynical, selfish and demoralised, Viola suggests that as a species sharing this planet with many other species, we are at our most palatable when we recompose our feelings toward one another, and share this composition in crisis.
The Raft
Performers: Sheryl Arenson, Robin Bonaccorsi,
Rocky Capella, Cathy Chang, Liisa Cohen,
Tad Coughenour, Tom Ficke, James Ford,
Michael Irby, Simon Karimian, John Kim,
Tanya Little, Mike Martinez, Petro Martirosian,
Jeff Mosley, Gladys Peters, Maria Victoria,
Kaye Wade, Kim Weild & Ellis Williams
Executive producer: Kira Perov
Creator & director: Bill Viola
Photography: Kira Perov
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