SIP MY OCEAN - EVER IS ALL OVER
Pippilotti RIST
A Special Edition welcome to
It might be difficult to discern some reading paths, ‘which one is next?’ you may ask but this too is part of the journey. I want you to have to turn your head at points as Pippi allows us to see new angles with her camera. It’s all intentional.
This edition will force you to submerge yourself not only in colour and eccen tricity as a visual composition, it should encourage a struggle to read text. The text presented here is idiosyncratic just like Rist’s work itself. Rist wants her viewer to see video as if it’s a third eye
I want you to read this as if you are looking through a kaleidoscope as Rist does visually. Your natural reading path should be distorted at times, I want to confuse you as the text bends around shapes. Pippi’s goal is to encourage her audience to question their acceptance of the ‘given’, things in life that we take for granted but are actually deeply complex. I think reading is one of these things. We have become so good at reading that it is instinctual. I hope to encourage you to rethink your instincts as Pippi does through her works.
pippilotti rist
THE LIFEWORK AND LEGACY OF
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Though the colours Rist uses are imbued with fluorescent tones and over-saturation, she claims that they are “no more colourful than life is” (Rist). While some would perceive her use of colours to be perhaps idealistic, for Rist her use of colour is sim ply a reinterpretation of reality. She questions and reinterprets what it means to see and the value of colour, “it’s like music” she says, a seductive element of the work, “you don’t know where it stops or what comes next”. Rist’s comparison of mu sic to colour makes me wonder what the distinction between our senses is and even if there is one. Perhaps, just like the inter disciplinary nature of Rist’s art our senses are also intersection al and completely dependent on each other. I would argue that you can’t see the same in the absence of noise and vice ver sa, each sense contributes to the capacity of the following sense.
AboutPippi
PippilottiRistchoseherownnamejustasshechoseherowndistinctivewayofconveyingtheworldandthewayitfunc-tionsforbetterorworse.AtschoolherfriendscalledherPippidrawinguponthespir-itofPippiLongstockings.AthomeshewasLotti.ThoughshealwayspreferredPippishedidn’tbelievethatshecouldbecompletely“freewithnocon-straints”asPippiLongstock-ingswasandsoshechosetocombinethetwonames.Be-yondnames,Pippilottigrewuptocombineartisticmediums.
However, the importance and meaning of colour runs deeper than this for Rist to a social level. She explains that colour and saturation are used so heavily in mass advertising that the bourgeoise distance themselves from this kind of colour. Colour therefore becomes a reflection of class in Rist’s work as she asks her audience to fall into the colour of the “gypsea, pro letariat and the exotic”(Rist). Colour is one of Rist’s symbols of life and acts as a way for her to “warm up [video art], a [otherwise] cold medium”.
Rist explores the nature of video art and the ways in which it can be manipulated to convey various emotions. What she likes most about video is its “painterly quality”(Rist) through which she is able to indicate that there is no separation be tween our bodies and nature. The camera acts as a third eye and an extension of the body for Rist so that she can show how life looks from unreachable places as if her viewer is an insect on a leaf or between blades of grass. Video shows the rela tivity of size she explains. But this is not video’s only capability, it is a “handbag” explains Rist, you can pack everything in: sound, poetry, storytelling, fashion.
Video can articu-late everything except perhaps touch.Considering this,Rist accompaniesthe ‘flatness’ of vid-eo with the sensualiclutionentialmakesForexploredunnoticedaltheirofinstallations.objectssculpturedimensionalitytangibleofand3DwithinherNonethesensesorintersectioninteractionsgoorun-byRist,.methisiswhathersoinfluintheevo-ofelectron-art,thereisnolimitation.On a thematic level Rist sees the possible hidden pleasures of daily life that most ignore. She has an idiosyncratic eye and way of articulating her vision. The more specific meanings and emotive intentions behind her work will be explored through her piece ‘Ever is All Over’. 4. 5.6. 7.
Rist is most well known for her experimental, cross-disciplinary, multimedia video art and installation work which she uses to create milieus and environments as if the viewer is submerged within a “kaleidoscopic projection” (MCA). Her process considers space and plays with the dimensionality of our perceived reality: the natural, physical and technological states of being. The spaces she creates are immersive, hyper sensual and perhaps ethereally explorative of an alternative or futuristic utopian reality.
To do this she tries to make abstract and unusual things ap pear as if they are “given” and war ranted within her new worlds so that we may question the mundane and observe what we are used to through over consumption with greater intrica cy. In ‘Ever is all Over’
Rist’s 1997 video piece ‘Ever is all Over’, one of her most famous, depicts a woman joyfully and perhaps even euphor ically smashing car windows with a flower as she floats and dances past people and policemen on the footpath who seem equally as pleased by her antics. Rist wanted to create the video as if you are falling in and out of consciousness with trance like music to accompany the hyper saturated visuals. Rist explains that some of her ideas arise from a dreamlike state and others act as “survival tactics” (Rist). Her idea for ‘Ever is all Over’ came from a moment of weakness when she wanted to smash her boss’s car in haste. After deciding that he wasn’t worth her energy, Rist instead chose to exert her compulsion in the form of her video art piece. Her hope was to use the aggression to construct a hopeful piece and a personal catharsis. Howev er, it runs deeper than this for Rist for both this specific artwork and her whole anthology. She wants her viewers to question their ac ceptance of “given things”.
Rist makes the smashing of windows appears routine and the subject makes the act seem as if it is a common ritualistic expression, one which should not be questioned. For humans, cars are a societal ‘given’, we use and see cars so frequently that we are undeterred by their brilliance. “We get used to things so quickly” says Rist and so she aims to provide a “counterforce” (Rist), flipping our perceptions. While the colours may appear synthetic there is a realism about the piece, it is still raw and tranquil despite the chaos the ensues. The tranquility partially comes from Rist’s use of a double projection with the movement of flower petals overlaying the woman smashing windows almost as if it is a double exposed image. Each projection gives meaning to other just as sound gives greater context to the image and what we see as the viewer.
EVERISALLOVER,
The part of Rist’s ‘Ever is All Over’ that I find most compelling and ground-breaking for the video medium is her use of colour. Rist explains that “in the Western world, color is underestimated…color is [actually] borderless, it’s danger ous, it’s emotional, like music. Primary colors—red, yellow, and blue—can look stupid by themselves. I’m interested in broken and dirty colors, natural shades. Painting with light, that’s what I try to do. Paul Klee said he wished he could have a color piano, and I am so lucky—I have a color piano!”. As someone who was named after a colour, ‘Indigo’, the idea that there is no boundary to colour is something that has fascinated me since I was a child. I used to close my eyes and try to imagine a new colour, some thing I hadn’t seen before. I wanted to be the first to name a new colour and trade mark it, a colour inventor was my dream job. The reality is that nature shows off all the colours that there are to offer and, in that sense, per haps there is a boundary to colour. But, when I look at Pippi’s work it is as if my childhood self has seen a new colour for the first time. The way Rist combines colours like light beams and allows them to move and bend both gracefully and erratically proves the lack of boundar ies to colour and their curation on screen. I also never quite understood the capacity of sound to be an extension of colour. As someone who experiences a level of synesthesia I draw correlations between colours and people or objects. However, for me it doesn’t necessarily translate to sound. When I watch Rist’s ‘Ever is All Over’ or her other video pieces, the connection becomes more clear. Red begins to have a higher pitch in my mind and blue a lower one. It is obvious that as an artist she does not overlook these connections and accentuates them through her mixed media works. Rist allows even those who don’t have synesthesia to experience for a moment what it might be like, she brings the senses together and eradicates their boundaries. For me, this is what separates Rist from other video artists and why I find her work to be so important to the development of multimedia and cross discipline electronic art forms.
ALLOVER,1997
(Pippi) InaGlobalContext
What is it that makes Rist so important to the recent development and evolution of multimedia artforms? And, how can she be situated within the history of video art and artists? The Lumiere brothers were some of the first to turn stills into moving image motion pictures. The films of the 1890s and well into the 1900s were black and white, they lacked colour, a medium which Rist centres her art around. While early films are known as ‘silent films’, they never actually were. They were always accompanied by some form of sound whether it was a live band or a vinyl record. Rist takes a similar approach in some ways, her sound too is prominently non-diegetic and highlights music to show case emotion. Rist both uses elements of the past and the technology of the present to create her own distinctive multi-me dia work within the context of the endless video productions made since the Lumiere brothers. While Rist sometimes makes use of the latest photographic and vid eo technology to construct her works she doesn’t neglect how fundamentally amazing the technology she uses is. In today’s soci ety the novelty of technol ogy has warn off in a decade of over-consump tion, having access to technology for most is a ‘given’, a state of normalcy. Rist wants to remind us of the in tricacies of the parts of life which we take for granted, through her work she wants to return normative things to a nuanced state of existence even if it is just momen tarily.
In terms of situating
Rist within the context of other video artists I am reminded of Loïe Fuller’s Serpentine Dance. Loïe skilfully explores the move ment of colour, a parallel I see with Rist’s work. Perhaps, it is the impossibility of co lours, both Loïe and Rist’s works don’t quite resemble reality be cause the colours are so poetic and artificial. Both artists exhibit the way video can change our perception of colour and movement. I also see a connection between Georges Méliès’ 1902 A Trip to the Moon because it implicitly asks the viewer what the distinction between art and entertainment or comedy are as Rist does. Video en ables its creators to generate audience euphoria from artificial and fictitious visuals, adding to the foundations laid by theatre. Both Rist’s ‘Ever is all Over’ and ‘A Trip to the Moon’ are examples of cinema that is both entertainment and art asking its viewer, is there a distinction between the two? From these comparisons to previous industry pio neers it is clear that Rist both takes on board their traditions and moves forwards to create her own. Still, both her contemporary work and that of her predecessors ask the same fundamental questions of their viewers. In that way, Rist is a truly valuable visual and emotive artist both on her own and within the context of electronic art history.
References The Colorful Worlds of Pipilotti RistThe New Ever Is All Over - Youtube Clip MCA - Pipilotti Rist: Sip My Ocean Pipilotti Rist Interview: Color is Danger ous
Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon) (1902)
Pipilotti Rist, Pioneer of Video Art | Bril liant Ideas Ep. 55
