Rosenthal, s. (2011),Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage. London: Hayward Publishing
Pipiloti Rist was as the forefront of the video art scene in the 1980's, she is known for her experimental video projections encompassing ideas of femininity, the body and fragility.
'she has created video projection works that are remarkable for their mesmerising imagery and cinematic verve, their gleeful and visceral poetics.'
'her early work often humorously toyed with conventional images of women and feminine stereotypes and she has continued throughout her career to vividly rewire our habitual ways of looking at the human body, while evoking the liveliness of vision itself and its links to sensual delight, her art comprises a passionate engagement with the physicality and fragility of our existence.'
(Rosenthal, 2011)
'when I set out to describe Rist's work, it's as though I am floating in another world or entering an impenetratable forest of images and experiences. The saturated greens, over-ripe fruits and lush blossoms overwhelm me; dark unfathomable overgrown regions appear uncanny and alien. Flowerbeds evoke a sense of joy and burgeoning life.'
Her work is highly visual, bright colours, exciting post editing video displays. She is also working with issue based ideas. I love how she atracks audience attention with her very clever creation of video but also how the viewer becomes a part of a lot of her works, and they each see the video a little bit differently
This is my favourite piece by the artist:
Ever Is Over All
1997. Installation at centre of contemporary art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw.
Explanation
In order to delineate
more closely the psychoanalytic dimension subtending Rist’s artistic double
voicing, I turn to a second video work. Ever is Over All (1997) begins with a
rapid pan upwards along the stalk of a flower, which in the subsequent themes,
comes to serve as an instrument for gleeful feminine destruction Armed with
this phallic flower, a young woman walks along a sidewalk in slow motion,
smiling, swings the flower up and down the length of her body, smashes windows
of cars, looped video. Accompanied by sound of humming feminine voices,
interrupted by breaking glass. Policewoman salutes, endorse forbidden act, more destructive.
‘The two female
figures emerge as dopplegangers, embodying the mutual implication of the law
and its transgression.’
(Rosenthal, 2011
p.118)
Analysis
‘Rist creates a play
on the idea of what it means to be upright in both a physical and moral sense’
‘The dyptic performs
a complex anagrammatic body because we are invited mentally to splice together
the flowing movement of the tracking shots (which fragment the flowers into
poignant details) with thelow motion shot capturing the womans dance. Thus
while appropriating the voyeurism of fetishism also meditation on movement.
Freuds penis envy
Fallic flower, stem
differentiate between two sections of the film and introduces a second woman,
First section
focusses on ‘clandestine voyeur to whom
no one pays attention,
Second section
focusses on the ‘site of origin for the woman’s violence’ focussed on the
movement of the flower
‘the cinematic magic
in the second part recalls Hitchcock’s analogy between the voyer’s eye and the
camera by capturing on screen the movement attributed to the flower-weapon
Double vision
‘Second section shows
an enactment of transgression on the level of the cinematic medium itself. ‘
(Rosenthal, 2011
p.118-119)
Although Rist is being influence by different issues to my won work, I wanted to explore her work in more detail because of the way she uses video so explain her cause and also her use of immersive environments.
This artist is a big influence to how I approach making videos and also the set up and display of my final environment.
