Buried Letter Press 2012

thousand natural shocks that our flesh inherits from this ordinary, absurd life. They struggled, in all their beauty and brutishness, and in the end, are given no reward, save for the right to say at least they struggled.

I left the gallery thinking of Sisyphus - the Greek character who, for having tricked the gods, was forced to push a boulder up a hill every day. When at the summit, the boulder would roll back down, and Sisphysus’s task would begin anew. French philosopher Albert Camus famously re-visioned this story, reading Sisyphus as an absurd hero who, while recognizing the meaninglessness of his struggle, could also acknowledge – even celebrate – a world based upon such meaningless struggle. In Viola’s “The Raft,” I can see reflections of this Sisyphus in the bodies struggling and thrashing, falling and enduring.

Yet later I found “The Raft” drawing me to another Greek myth. In a different punishment by the gods, a man named Tantalus was forced to stand in a pool of water under a fruit tree. He suffered from great hunger and thirst, yet when he reached for the fruit, the branches raised out of reach. When he bent down for a drink, the water receded. The crowd in “The Raft” was left standing in a puddle of water, a place of newfound community in the face of hardship and disaster. What were they reaching for?

For the audience of “The Raft,” the video ends in empathy. And silence. The light fades from the screen and the room goes black. Our eyes moves from the bodies on the screen to our own. From their story to ours. What was I struggling against as my eyes readjusted outside the gallery? What was I reaching for?

Bill Viola’s “The Raft” is available for viewing at The Butler Museum of Art in Youngstown, OH through the end of the year.