Pipilotti Rist on art as “Bonus Track“. Also discussed art as a service. Rist thinks of herself as a service worker.

“Treating video images almost as a new form of organic life, she has installed monitors or projected images inside bathrooms, liquor bottles, seashells and, of course, handbags, as well as projecting them everywhere from a Venetian church ceiling to the plaza in front of the Pompidou Center, where she created, in effect, a television screen of Gulliverian proportions that people could congregate atop. “I wanted to get the stories out of the box and just spread them around,” she has said of her work.“

Read more (here)

¿Quién es Pipilotti Rist? Ese nombre evoca personajes de cómic, de ficción, nos recuerda a la Pipi Calzaslargas, y no vamos mal encaminados, pues si bien Pipilotti Rist es en realidad Elisabeth Charlotte Rist, es también la niña terrible del arte suizo, aunque ese Pipilotti no es un nombre postizo artístico sino que ya en su infancia se la llamaba así, lo que nos da una idea de que no sería precisamente un angelito.

Sus proyecciones y videoexposiciones son reconocidas y aplaudidas en todo el mundo. Desde Nueva York hasta Alemania y Venecia, e incluso España le ha concedido el premio Joan Miro 2009 el pasado mayo.

Pipilotti Rist ha realizado su primer largometraje y está siendo proyectado en las salas de cine en Suiza desde septiembre de este año. Este largometraje trata de una niña terrible también, que se llama Pepperminta y está encargada de transmitir a la humanidad el descubrimiento de los sentidos de la vista. El film muestra un derroche de colores y sensaciones. Los mensajes: *Los colores son masaje para la retina. *Siempre es el momento oportuno para nacer. *Se necesita solamente un pequeño momento sin miedo y algunas personas que estén dispuestas a colaborar.

Entrevista en el Festival de Cine en Sevilla

Enlace con cortos del largometraje Pepperminta

I recently refuted Virgina Heffernan’s euphoric claim about YouTube’s aesthetic gold (everything is…). Even more recently I speculated that: “(Traditional)  video art carries assumptions about method, form, and audience. The term refers to uses of the medium that demonstrate 1) some awareness of previous forms (of art, media, or evidence) and an attendant attention to craft and 2) non-industrial funding, production, and distribution models often in clear defiance to those organizing industrial television, advertising, and film. Authorization needs to occur via display or consumption. Video becomes art when it is vetted, circulated or consumed as such.” What happens to video art seen on YouTube hidden within the mayhem:

So there’s the rub. Video on YouTube (that made by people and not corporations) easily succeeds in criteria 1 and 2. 1) Video on YouTube speaks to the traditions of video on YouTube which mostly speak to conventions of dominant media. And whether it’s “good” or “bad,” people construct it using the craft at their disposal. 2) It is made outside (but eerily congruent to) dominant modes Including video art).

But sitting as it does on YouTube, and thus only authorizable by numbers (of hits) itself a mark of populist mediocrity, and never understood as “art” in the first place, but coming to construction more through a logic of everyday practice, home-production, and consumer-fun, it can only be art if it moves off YouTube.

Y a des fois quand même, on se dit que l’herbe est plus verte ailleurs. Moi, j’aimerai brouter à N.Y.C. J’y ai déjà été en 2008 à l’occasion des fêtes avec ma soeur et ma mère, et je me suis pris une grande claque dans la tronche! J’en garde encore un souvenir mémorable.

N.Y.C.

Une de mes plus agréables surprises fut le MoMA (Museum of Moder Art): je ne suis pas une très grande férue d’art ou de musées, même si j’aime de temps en temps aller à une expo ou me perdre une après-midi au Louvre. Ce musée est tout sauf chiant, il est surprenant, ouvert, et les expos temporaires sont magiques! Dans la partie “classique” du musée, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin cotoient  Wharrol, Bacon et Koones. On s’en prend plein les mirettes.

Le MoMA

Mais je pense que là où le MoMA se distingue des autres musées, c’est dans les expos temporaires; lors de ma seule et unique visite (sniff), on y a vu

Pipilotti Rist qui y avait installé 7354 mètres cubes d’espace “détente” baptisé “Pour Your Body Out” (en français: “Déverse ton corps”).

Une pièce gigantesque, un immense canapé en cercle, au centre un tapis confortable, des coussins, et à l’entrée un panneau qui nous demande d’enlever nos chaussures.

Autour: des écrans de 8 mètres de hauteur diffusent des images… surprenantes: des corps nus, des pieds en gros plan, une roue de camion qui écrase des fleurs, une tête qui plonge dans l’eau puis en ressort…

Et voilà qu’une bonne centaine d’inconnus se retrouvent allongés côte à côte à regarder ces images parfois très charnelles, les bébés des uns jouant au milieux, les ados et les personnes âgées partageant le même coussin.

Et à partir de novembre, Tim Burton entre au musée lui aussi (soupir)

Tim Burton

Faut vraiment que j’y retourne…

Ein Märchen von einem Mädchen, das den Menschen die Ängste austreibt.

Ein Film von Pipilotti Rist, PEPPERMINTA

Zum Trailer Pepperminta

Sono da poco tornato al lavoro ma le vacanze da poco trascorse già sembrano lontane anni luce. Tra i ricordi più vivi di uno dei miei viaggi on holiday c’è sicuramente quello relativo alla piacevole giornata trascorsa tra le mura del Centro nazionale d’arte e di cultura Georges Pompidou che, tra le molte opere proproste, mi ha permesso di conoscere anche Pipilotti Rist, celebre videoartista svizzera di fama internazionale che – ho scoperto quasi per caso – proprio questi giorni presenta come regista alla Mostra del Cinema di Venezia, nella sezione “Orizzonti”, la sua opera prima, “Pepperminta“.
L’installazione audio-video, intitolata A la belle étoile, è una sorta di viaggio senza sosta tra diversi universi ricchi di colore e luci, nei quali interno ed esterno si fondono sino a sparire (difficilissimo raccontare con parole l’esperienza vivisa!). Tra l’altro, cercando nella Rete, ho trovato anche la sua bellissima galleria di scatti variopinti, capici di rilassarmi e di appagare la mia vista come pochi altri. La speranza è quella di poter ammirare presto anche in Italia le opere di questa artista che ha saputo stupirmi con la semplicità e la leggerezza delle sue visioni.

Recurring dreams. I have one in which I keep on falling and falling. In a corner of Ann Veronica Janssens‘ Serendipity-exhibition at Wiels (Brussels) I suddenly found myself right in the middle of that nightmare. That’s why I love this Belgian artist: some of her work strongly meddles with your senses.

Isn’t it strange? Of some pieces of work you know exactly when and where you’ve seen them, and what impression they made on you. Why do they stand out? And why do you forget so many other paintings or exhibitions, even though they were truly great? On my list, for instance, are Robert Rauschenberg’s Monogram in Brussels (‘81), Willem de Kooning’s late paintings in New York (‘97) and Pipilotti Rist’s Ever is all over-video in NY (2000). And I clearly remember stepping into Ann Veronica Janssens’ Blue, Red and Yellow, in front of S.M.A.K. in Ghent, a couple of years ago. 

For Serendipity, AVJ’s first major Belgian exhibition in ten years, that magical ‘container’ is reconstructed on the roof terrace of the Brussels’ Contemporary Art Centre Wiels. Don’t miss it, because it’s a quintessential piece of work. Inside that coloured box filled with mist, you lose all sense of time and space. And along the way this artist, who’s often been described as a sculptor of light, sound and space, seems to succeed in making colour and light tangible.

It’s what AVJ seems to be after. Interfering with your senses. Making visible/audible what is by definition invisible/inaudible. And be warned: your eyes and your ears will be put to the test, in Brussels, with stroboscopic lights and quite disturbing sounds. Sometimes the effects are even rather violent. Apart from Blue, Red and Yellow, there’s no mist. AVJ has used that element rather often, so she and the curator of this exhibition absolutely didn’t want there to be any in Wiels. Don’t expect a big retrospective too. There aren’t thát many works on display, and most of the work in Serendipity is new.

And not all of that is AVJ at her best. Frankly, Untitled (Golden section) is not really a piece of work to be put in a museum. This ’shimmering curtain’ works much better in the environment for which it was created: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s recent performance The Song (read review here). Some of AVJ’s video’s and prototypes look rather bland too, in comparison with her other work.

There’s one room in which she lets you ‘bathe’ in red and blue (Rouge 106, Bleu 132), another one in which she attempts to create an absolute silence (Chambre Anéchoïque), but I was really taken by surprise by her Son infini. Just a speaker and one sound coming from it: an auditory illusion of infinite descent.  By means of almost nothing – that one sound, seeming to get lower and lower and lower – she succeeded in having a really powerful effect on my body, my senses and my thoughts. By that, she just might have pulled it off: putting a second work on my ‘list’.

Oh, and do go and by yourself a beer or a coffee afterwards. Because there’s a possibility that you end up with a real Ann Veronica Janssens in your hands: for 9000 euros (Conversions), the artist put 9000 stickers on 1 euro-coins, thereby translating the monetary value of 1 euro into 9 other values, such as chance, ecstasy, oxygen, light and… stardust.

(photo credits:  ’Installation view’ © Pascual Mercé – Courtesy EACC;  Side (video still), Courtesy Galerie Micheline Szwajcer)

Työpäivät kuluvat nopeasti ja monet pienet asiat hajottavat valitettavan usein huomion. Matkalaskujen kirjoittaminen, sähköpostin siivoilu, työhyvinvointikyselyt jne. varastavat arvokasta työaikaa usein huomaamatta. Tänään olen kuitenkin keskittynyt tutkimussuunnitelman päivittämiseen ja matka-apurahahakemuksen tekemiseen. Nostan hattua kaikille apurahojen kanssa kamppaileville!

Apuraharumba voi itsellä olla vakavamminkin edessä, jos jatkoa tälle assistentuurille ei jostain syystä myönnettäisikään. Työsuhde päättyy näillä näkymin tammikuun 2010 loppuun. Pätkätyöläisen todellisuus on rasittavan epävarmaa. Kevääksi on laadittava siis myös suunnitelma B, C ja D – ehkä elämä kuitenkin kantaa, jos itse aktiivisesti yrittää?

Kiasman Pipiliotti Ristin avajaiset taitavat jäädä väliin, sillä työpäivän jälkeen sitä viettää vapaa-aikansa mieluummin kotona. Tutkijanelämäni haaste on pitää työ- ja vapaa-aika erillään -sekä tasapainosssa! Maanantaina on sitten vuoro perehtyä uuden työkannettavan salaisuuksiin – mac-maailma tuntuu etäisesti tutulta opiskeluajoilta, mutta käyttäjä kaipaa päivitystä taitoinsa. Henkilöstökoulutus ja IT-tuki ovat onneksi ison talon etuja, joita hyödynnän mieluusti.


Tutkijan päivän pahin:
Nälkä ja tylsät eväät
Tutkijan päivän paras:
Matka-apuraha-anomuksen valmistuminen sekä tarkastettavan lopputyön lueskelu sohvalla, teekuppi kädessä

Pepperminta by Pipilotti Rist

Un film del 2009, regia di Pipilotti Rist, con Ewelina Guzik / Susanne Wuest / Sven Pippig / Sabine Timoteo. Prodotto da (80min)

Commedia

Pepperminta è un’anarchica dell’immaginazione che secondo le proprie regole personali. Pepperminta conosce i rimedi più straordinari per liberare le persone dalle loro paure, e il suo più grande desiderio è che tutti vedano il mondo nei suoi colori preferiti. Werwen, un giovane timido e grassoccio che Pepperminta trova abbia un forte sex appeal, e la bella Edna, che parla ai tulipani, si uniscono alla protagonista nella sua appassionata missione. Questi tre moschettieri sui generis intraprendono una lotta per un mondo più umano e dovunque la banda compaia tutto va gambe all’aria e la vita delle persone si trasforma nei modi più miracolosi e stupefacenti.

66th Venice Film Festival has announced its full programme this morning (July 30).

Competition:

Opening film:Baaria – Giuseppe Tornatore – Italy

Soul Kitchen – Fatih Akin – Germany

La Doppia Ora – Giuseppe Capotondi – Italy

Yi ngoi (Accident) – Cheang Pou- Soi – China/Hong Kong

Persecution – Patrice Chereau – France

Lo Spazio Bianco (White Space) – Francesca Comencini – Italy

White Material – Claire Denis – France

Mr. Nobody – Jaco van Dormael – France

A Single Man – Tom Ford – USA

Lourdes-Jessica Hausner – Austria

Bad Lieutenant: Port Of New Orleans – USA – Werner Herzog

The Road – John Hillcoat – USA

Ahasin Wetei (Between Two Worlds) – Vimukhti Jayasundara – Sri Lanka

El Mosafer (The Traveller) Ahmed Maher – Eqypt

Levanon (Lebanon) – Samuel Maoz – Israel

Capitalism: A Love Story – Michael Moore – USA

Zanan-e-bedun-e mardan (Women Without Men) – Shirin Neshat – Germany

Il Grande Sogno (The Big Dream) – Michele Placido – Italy

36 Vues Du Pic Saint Loup – Jacques Rivette – France

Life During Wartime -Todd Solondz – USA

Tetsuo The Bullet Man – Shinya Tsukamoto – Japan

Lei wangzi (Prince of Tears) – Yonfan – China/Taiwan/Hong Kong

There will be an additional “suprise film” in competition.

OUT OF COMPETITION

[Rec ] 2 – Paco Plaza,Jaume Balaguero – Spain

Chengdu, Wo Ai Ni (Chengdu, I Love You) – Fruit Chan, Cui Jian – China

The Hole – Joe Dante – USA

The Men Who Stare At Goats – Grant Heslov – USA

Ehky ya Schahrazad (Scheherazade, Tell Me A Story) – Yousry Nasrallah – Egypt

Yona Yona Penguin- Rintaro – (Animation) – Japan

The Informant! – Steven Soderbergh – USA

Horizons – Orizzonti

Opening Film: Francesca – Bobby Paunescu – Romania

Wahed-Sefr (One-Zero)- Kamla Abou Zekri – Egypt

Dohawa (Buried Secrets) – Raja Amari – Tunisia

Zarte Parasiten (Tender Parasites)- Christian Becker/Oliver Schwabe – Germany

Choi voi (Adrift) – Bui Thac Chuyen – Vietnam

Korotkoye Zamykaniye (Crush) – Petr Buslov, Alexi German Jr., Boris Khlebnikov, Kirill Serebrennikov, Ivan Vrypayev – Russia

Repo Chick – Alex Cox – USA

Engkwentro – Pepe Diokno – Philippines

Aadmi Ki Aurat Aur Anya Kahaniya (The Man’s Woman and Other Stories) – Amit Dutta – India

Paraiso – Hector Galvez – Peru

Io Sono Amore (I Am Love) – Luca Guadagnino – Italy

Dou niu (Cow) – Guan Hu – China

Touxi (Judge) – Liu Jie – China

Pepperminta - Pipilotti Rist – Switzerland

Insolacao – Vincenzo Terracciano – Tris Di Donne & Abiti Nuziali

Daniela Thomas, Felipe Hirsch – Brazil

1428 – Du Haibin – China

Viajo Porque Preciso, Volto Porque Tea Mo (I Travel Because I Think I Have To, I Come Back To You Because I Love You) – Marcelo Gomes, Karim Ainouz – Brazil

Women Cenging De Wuchanzhe (Once Upon A Time Proletarian:

12 Tales Of A Country) – Guo Xiaolu -China

Villalobos - Romuald Karmakar – Germany

Il Colore Delle Parole – Marco Simon Puccioni – Italy

The One All Alone – Frank Scheffer – Holland

Toto – Peter Schreiner – Austria

There is be one additional “surprise film” in this section.

Cinema Del Presente  

Napoli, Napoli,Napoli – Abel Ferrara – Italy

Anni Luce – Francesco Maselli – Italy

L’Oro Di Cuba – Giuliano Montaldo – Italy

Prove Per Una Tragedia Siciliana - Roman Paska, John Tuturro – Italy

South Of The Border – Oliver Stone – USA

Midnight – Mezzanotte

Gulaal – Anurag Kashyap  - India

Dev D – Anurag Kashyap – India

Brooklyn’s Finest – Antoine Fuqua – USA

Deli 6 – Mehra Rakeysh Omprakash – India

Valhalla Rising – Nicolas Winding Refn – Denmark

Toy Story 3-D – John Lasseter – USA – (Lasseter has already been awarded a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement)

Toy Story 2 3-D – John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich, Ash Brannon – USA

This was a lovely idea. A group of artists were each given a room in the Hayward to fill. This simple premise gave the exhibition a playful quality, and a diversity, which I really liked. Some of it didn’t work for me but I suppose that was inevitable.
My favourite room was After the Dream by Chiharu Shiota. It was beautiful and dreamlike. You walked around the room through a curving tunnel made out of a cats cradle web, formed from dark string. In the centre of the room, viewed through the cats cradle, were five plain, papery, delicate dresses with the sleeves lifted towards each other, facing inwards, as though they were taking part in a still dance. It was like something from a fairytale and children were enjoying running round it while adults walked quietly with a sense of wonder. Shiota calls what she does drawing in the air and that describes it well.
I also liked Thomas Hirschhorn’s room, Cavemanman. This was most definitely a return to chilhood, an artists superden, a trail with four open spaces, caverns made from flattened cardboard boxes and masking tape. It seemed huge and had turning corners and ups and downs so that you made surprising discoveries as you went along and didn’t know what to expect or really understand what you were seeing. You had to guess and there were no right answers. When I was seven or eight I would have been beyond ecstatic to be allowed to make something like this!
I was looking forward to Yayoi Kusama’s room too, full of green turf and red spots and the trees along the south bank looked great with their flamboyant red spotted trunks.
Another thing which would have delighted me even more as a seven year old than it did now was Yoshimoto Nara’s room, My Drawing Room, a small Japanese wendy house filled with everything he would have around him to work. It was as if he had just slipped out for a moment and we were allowed to sneak close, look though the windows and snoop.
Pipilotti Rist had made a room full of dreams and nightmares. A dark space where you sat and were spoken to by projected floating body parts, slowly moving and distorting thorough space. It was surreal and beautiful and distinctly odd. The kind of thing you half remember when you wake up, something which almost makes sense and makes you feel there is a secret there which you are almost graping the meaning of.
I have been wondering what I would do with an empty room at the Hayward ever since.

The Mind In The Cave: Thomas Hirschhorn's Cavemanman

Neuroaesthetics just made another poke at contemporary art when an interesting show recently opened at the Hayward Gallery in London under the title Walking In My Mind. The exhibition gathers ten artists from USA, Europe and Japan that all have made works that can be “read as translations of the human mind into physical form.”, using the words by one of the two curators Stephanie Rosenthal (the other being Mami Kataoka). In her catalogue essay for the show Rosenthal tries to outline a non-engaged theory of mind and art institution. She does best in her attempt to relate works such as Thomas Hirschhorn’s work Cavemanman. The work is described as a way of trying to structure the viewer’s mind as in a cave with cavities ”where you put something inside, with garbage, with unspeakable things.”. Sure Hirschhorn knows that he he working with metaphors, but I have a hard time seeing his cave metaphor pared with Hegel’s theory of absolute mind how this is more than a naive attempt at talking about the brain through an established artistic practice. Sorry Hirschhorn!

Much more intriguing is psychologist Susan Blackmore’s text “Mysteries of the Mind”. In it she makes interesting (although no ground-breaking) points on the mind-body problem, as seen through the artifacts in a contemporary art exhibition.  Other artists in the exhibition include Pipilotti Rist, Mark Manders and Yoshitomo Nara.

If you are going anywhere this artsy summer, should be via London.

i na Times Square:

Fot. Weronika Szmuc

Codziennie, od 12 do 23 czerwca, między 11 a 23. Raz na godzinę.

Messages conveyed on emotional and sensual frequencies can break more prejudices and habits than hundreds of pamphlets and intellectual tracts.

Pipilotti Rist – w Krakowie, na Bagateli. Już od dzisiaj.

Here’s a note to my niece in Paris about seeing the “Elles” exhibition at Centre Pompidou – don’t miss the Joan Mitchell paintings and for sure Pipilotti Rist.

And here’s a compilation of some of Rist’s videos at UbuWeb.