Isolde’s Ascension -The Shape of Light in the Space after Death, 2005

An unexpected din accompanies the image of a woman’s body that rises upward. Inert and lifeless, the body ascends with lightness, as if it had entered a new dimension, possibly the introduction to a superterrestrial world. The body leaves behind a luminous trace, an infinite number of points that seem like stars in the sky. The event repeats cyclically, and its occurrence is preceded by the serene vision of a surface of water traversed by a beam of light. Projected on a vertically mounted plasma screen, Isolde’s Ascension (The Shape of Light in the Space after Death), 2005, was conceived as part of Love/Death: the Tristan Project, a series that Bill viola initially created for the theater, on the occasion of a recent production of Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. [...]