 (The Sound of a Mountain under a Waterfall)

Extracted from a tripartite Coproduction named THE TRISTAN PROJECT between Peter Sellars, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Bill Viola, „Tristan´s Ascension“ represents one scene by the threepart orchestration from Richard Wagners „Tristan and Isolde“.

Filmed with 35mm high speed film and different kind of cameras, Bill Viola invented several monumental video installations on this theme.

Tristan´s Ascension is showing the deciding images of the devotement and transcendence of the body. Matched with resounding fields of noise coming out by a collapsing mass of water, which surprisingly running upstairs, the work is increasing questions of spirituality, material and time. Shown on a enormous format and pushed by a powerful soundsystem, the athmospere is all-consuming and non-escapable.

Tristan's Ascension

Bill Viola