Admission Free

Chott el-Djerid (A Portrait in Light and Sound)
Made entirely of mirages recorded in Tunisia, Viola's tape records his discovery in the Sahara Desert of the existence of a space where the dream world seems to combine with the world of waking reality, “but on a grand scale and of such pervasiveness that in contrast the world which we saw when we finally emerged seemed weird and strange by comparison. Here the intense desert heat manipulates, bends, and distorts the light rays to such an extent that you ‘see' things which literally are not there. Trees and sand dunes float off the ground, the edges of mountains and buildings ripple and vibrate, color and form blend into one shimmering dance. If one believes that mental hallucinations are actually the manifestation of some chemical or biological imbalance in the brain, then mirages and desert heat distortions can be considered hallucinations of the landscape.”

Viola will also show selections from Four Songs, Memory Surfaces and Mental Prayers, and Migration