Film

Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House

Director

Bill Viola

Year

1983

This haunting installment contains a solitary wood chair with headphones attached, facing a television monitor. A man (the artist himself), looking visibly fatigued, appears on the screen, sitting in his own chair. Here, the artist compels viewers into an intimate relationship: they sit at eye level with him, listening to the sound of his breathing through the headphones. —Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa.