Pipilotti Rist, birth name Elizabeth Rist (born 21 June 1962), is a Swiss visual artist who works in experimental video art and installation art. Her work is often described as surreal, intimate and abstract, often depicting the human body.
Rist's work is known for its multi-sensory qualities, with overlapping projected imagery that is highly saturated with color, paired with sound components that are part of a larger environment with spaces for viewers to rest or lounge. Rist's work often transforms the architecture or environment of a white cube gallery into a more immersive, tactile, auditory and visual experience. Her works are held by many important art collections worldwide.
Early life and education Elizabeth Rist was born in the Rhine Valley of Switzerland. She is the second of five children of Anna Lippuner, a primary school teacher, and Walter Rist-Lippuner, a village doctor. Her father, a construction site physician in Sedrun, located in the swiss canton Grisons, spent a lot of time in the darkroom, developed his X-ray images, as well as many of his own photographs. Over the years, he became a passionate photographer.
In 1982, Rist started going by "Pipilotti", a combination of her childhood nickname "Lotti" and her childhood hero, Astrid Lindgren's character Pippi Longstocking, who she saw as standing for unconventionality, wildness, cheerfulness and imagination.
Before studying art and film, Rist studied theoretical physics in Vienna for one semester.
From 1982 to 1986, Rist studied commercial art, illustration, and photography at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She later studied video at the Basel School of Design, Switzerland. During her studies, Rist began making super 8 films.
From 1988 through 1994, Rist was member of the band and performance group Les Reines Prochaines.
In 1997, Rist's work was featured for the second time in the Venice Biennial, where she was awarded the Premio 2000 Prize.
From 2002 to 2003, Rist was invited by Paul McCarthy to teach at UCLA as a visiting faculty member.
Work Rist's works generally last only a few minutes, borrowing from mass-media formats such as musical films, MTV and advertising, with alterations in their colors, speed, and sound.
Rist's works often treat issues related to gender, sexuality, and the human body. Colorful and musical, her works transmit a sense of happiness and self-fulfilling positive energy.In I'm Not The Girl Who Misses Much (1986) Rist dances in front of a camera in a black dress with half-uncovered breasts. The images are often monochromatic and fuzzy. Rist repeatedly sings "I'm not the girl who misses much", a reference to the first line of the song "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" by the Beatles. As the video approaches its end, the image becomes increasingly blue and fuzzy and the sound slows down.Holly, Rogers, Sounding the Gallery: Video and the Rise of Art-Music [Oxford University Press, 2013]Sip my Ocean (1996) is an audio-video installation projected as a mirrored reflection on two adjoining walls, duplicating the video as sort of Rorschach inkblots. Besides a television and teacups, other domestic items can be seen sinking slowly under the ocean surface. The video is intercut with dreamlike frames of bodies swimming underwater and other melancholic images such as colourful overlays of roses across the heavens. Slightly abstract and layered the visuals invite the viewer to reveal their depth beneath the surface. Accompanying the video is Rist singing Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game". Her voice starts sweetly but becomes gradually out of synchronicity with the song, ending in the shrieking chorus of “No, I don’t wanna fall in love”. Rist breaks the illusion of synchronicity in the video with the asynchrony of the audio and captures the human longing for and impossibility of being totally in tune with somebody else.
Ever Is Over All (1997) shows in slow-motion a young woman walking along a city street, smashing the windows of parked cars with a large hammer in the shape of a tropical flower. At one point a police officer greets her. The audio video installation has been purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The work was referenced in Beyoncé's visual album Lemonade (2016).
I want to see how you see – a portrait of Cornelia Providori (2003) is an audio-visual work spanning 5 minutes and 16 seconds.Pipilotti Rist: "I want to see how you see" Blick Production NY, 2003 The sound was created in collaboration with Andreas Guggisberg, with whom Rist frequently works. The main subject is the dialectical tension between macro and micro and how the continents are mirrored on the human body. The technical components are two to four layers of edited images, intricately cut and stacked on top of each other.Ilene Kurtz-Kretschmar: "Point of view: an anthology of the moving image" Blick Production NY, 2004 (Nr. 10. Pipilotti Rist. I want to see how you see. An interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist.
When interviewed by The Guardian for a preview of her 2011 exhibition at London's Hayward gallery, Rist described her feminism: "Politically," she says, "I am a feminist, but personally, I am not. For me, the image of a woman in my art does not stand just for women: she stands for all humans. I hope a young guy can take just as much from my art as any woman."
Rist has likened her videos to that of women's handbags, hoping that they'd have “room in them for everything: painting, technology, language, music, lousy flowing pictures, poetry, commotion, premonitions of death, sex, and friendliness."
Artistic dimensions of the work Rist's work reflects “the perception of reality shaped by the media”. At the same time, she conveys “alternative views of her own physicality, social context and reality.”Stephanie Damianitsch, Brigitte Huck, Eva Laquièze-Waniek, August Ruhs, Hans-Peter Wipplinger: Biografie. In: Hans-Peter Wipplinger (Hrsg.): Pipilotti Rist – Komm Schatz, wir stellen die Medien um & fangen nochmals von vorne an: [Katalog zur Ausstellung Pipilotti Rist, Komm, Schatz, wir stellen die Medien um & fangen nochmals von vorne an, 22. März bis 28. Juni 2015, kunsthalle.at]. König, Köln 2015, ISBN 978-3-901261-61-9, S. o. S. Her work is characterized by a mixture of “subversion and hilarity”, according to the accompanying text to the Pipilotti Rist star cut in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit in 2015.Katja Nicodemus, Christof Siemes: Die Fix-it-Frau. In: Die Zeit. Nr. 23. Zeitverlag Gerd Bucerius GmbH & Co. KG, Hamburg 3. Juni 2015, S. 56. In addition to video installations and experimental films, her works also include environments, objects, computer art and digital photomontages.
Further development of video technology In 2016, Rist said that her work over the past 30 years had been significantly influenced by the technology available at the time. As an example, she cited the so-called lipstick camera (a surveillance camera) in Pickelporno, which enabled her to get very close to the skin without creating shadows.Pipilotti Rist im Gespräch mit Massimiliano Gioni; Massimiliano Gioni: Body Elektric: An Interview with Pipilotti Rist. In: Massimiliano Gioni, Margot Norton: Pipilotti Rist. Pixel Forest. London, New York, Phaidon Press, 2016, S. 49-76;65 The decisive factor in the use of technical innovations is the goals for which they are used and who has the power over them.Pipilotti Rist im Gespräch mit Massimiliano Gioni; Massimiliano Gioni: Body Elektric: An Interview with Pipilotti Rist. In: Massimiliano Gioni, Margot Norton: Pipilotti Rist. Pixel Forest. London, New York, Phaidon Press, 2016, S. 49-76;69 Rist sees audio-video technology as a reflection of our senses. RGB technology, for example, is a rudimentary copy of the human eye and therefore an artistic tool of her choice.
Rist used various technical formats, including Super 8, VHS, U-matic, Hi8, MiniDVDs, underwater, endoscopic and digital film technology. Margot Norton: Blood-Driven Cameras. In: Massimiliano Gioni, Margot Norton: Pipilotti Rist. Pixel Forest. London, New York, Phaidon Press, 2016, S. 155–189; 155 In an interview with Massimiliano Gioni, the artist described how she initially used Super 8 animation films and slides to create stage effects for concerts, for example for Les Reines des Couteaux and Billion Bob and the Family.Pipilotti Rist im Gespräch mit Massimiliano Gioni; Massimiliano Gioni: Body Elektric: An Interview with Pipilotti Rist. In: Massimiliano Gioni, Margot Norton: Pipilotti Rist. Pixel Forest. London, New York, Phaidon Press, 2016, S. 49-76;49 In this strongly application-oriented phase, she was concerned with finding suitable techniques for cross-fades and color changes. However, working with Super 8 technology was expensive and time-consuming, as the films first had to be developed before editing. In the mid-1980s, she therefore began studying at the Kunsthochschule Basel, which built on her vocational training in order to gain access to cameras and editing tables. She studied there together with Käthe Walser, Muda Mathis, among others. Her lecturer René Pulver had a lot of experience with video technology and introduced her to it.
In 1986, Rist submitted her video I'm Not The Girl Who Misses Much to the Solothurn Film FestivalPipilotti Rist im Gespräch mit Massimiliano Gioni; Massimiliano Gioni: Body Elektric: An Interview with Pipilotti Rist. In: Massimiliano Gioni, Margot Norton: Pipilotti Rist. Pixel Forest. London, New York, Phaidon Press, 2016, S. 49-76;53 and was invited to show it at the Basel Gewerbemuseum (closed since 1996). She thus made the step from the world of cinema and music into the art scene. The magnetic videotapes were initially shown on television screens, e.g. in I'm Not the Girl who Misses Much, Sexy Sad I (1987) or Blutclip. Later it was extended to walls and large screens as expanded cinema - for example in Sip My Ocean (1996) and Ever Is Over All - or transferred to the privacy of a portable smartphone screen. According to Norton, the technical change was accompanied by a more intensive convergence of audience and image.
The monitor was then transformed from a presentation device into part of an installation, for example in TV Chandelier (1993).Melissa Rérat: L'Art Vidéoo au Féminin. Emanuelle Antille, Elodie Pong, Pipilotti Rist. Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, Lausanne, ISBN 978-2-88915-086-1, S. 35 Later, the installation extended to entire exhibition spaces and included not only monitors and projection surfaces, but also other objects, some of which were also projected onto. The first example of this new type is Himalaya Goldstein's Stube (1999) with seven video projectors, some of which are integrated into furniture, an audio system and many other objects.Melissa Rérat: L'Art Vidéoo au Féminin. Emanuelle Antille, Elodie Pong, Pipilotti Rist. Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, Lausanne, ISBN 978-2-88915-086-1, S. 36 Here, Rist made it possible to enter a completely furnished living room. Projections glide over the furniture like daydreams, everyday life and fantasy flow into one another.