The Lady is a Hooligan
Pipilotti Rist at the Hara
Museum in Tokyo
Disguised as a female worm, Pipilotti
Rist scorches herself in Purgatory in her video installations – or
shatters car windows dressed as a musical showgirl. Now, the Swiss
artist’s work is on show in a Deutsche Bank-sponsored exhibition in Tokyo. Brigitte
Werneburg on Rist’s post-feminist digital cosmos.
Pipilotti
Rist, Selbstlos im Lavabad
(Selfless
In The Bath Of Lava), 1994,
audio
video installation (video still)
Courtesy
the artist and Hauser & Wirth Zürich London
The
Biennale
was still in the process of being installed. In the Shanghai
Art Museum, through the half-opened door to a room, I glimpsed an
endless row of plush armchairs lined up against the windows. Attracted by
the prospect of a short break, I snuck into the large hall. It seemed to
have been forgotten by the Biennale activities – a strangely magical
wonder lounge in which video beamers projected indefinable spirals of
colored light onto the walls, making the room revolve in a poetic blue
glow. As it turns out, the hall was the meeting room of the museum’s
director. The young woman balancing on a high ladder, attaching thin
branches, all kinds of mirrors, glittering CDs, and assorted translucent
plastic objects onto the ceiling with transparent thread could only be Pipilotti
Rist.
Pipilotti
Rist, Unschuldig-es (in) Shanghai
(Innocent
(In) Shanghai ), 2002,
installation
view at Shanghai Art Museum Biennale,
Photo
Ritsu Yoshino
Courtesy the
artist and Hauser & Wirth Zürich London
Presently,
Pipilotti Rist is once again busily installing her works in a Far Eastern
city, this time preparing her first one-woman exhibition in Japan at the Hara
Museum in Tokyo. The audience in the Japanese capital probably won’t
be any less enthusiastic about the show than visitors to Innocent
(In) Shanghai, who willingly let themselves be lured into the
installation’s glittering trance, its floating psychedelic dream images,
shining revolving objects, and hypnotic accompanying sounds. Rist’s work
makes the branches appear like a nature morte – with stark shadows that
both underscore the installation’s construction and anchor the various
levels of montaged image, object, and sound.
Pipilotti
Rist, Apfelbaum unschuldig auf dem Diamantenhügel
(Apple
Tree Innocent On Diamond Hill), 2003,
installation
view at Postbahnhof, Berlin,
Photo
Arja Hyytiainen
Courtesy the
artist and Hauser & Wirth Zürich London
The
scene from 2002 described at the beginning of this essay possessed a truly
emblematic character; it was an image that seemed to entirely embody
Pipilotti Rist’s artistic approach. The professionalism in her response to
the invitation was remarkable: although her work made a huge exhibition
hall come to life, she’d succeeded in transporting the required materials
to China in her hand luggage. Added to this was her gracious behavior –
after all, wasn’t it one big, infinitely polite gesture towards her
Chinese hosts, whose organizational powers she clearly did not want to
test, but on the contrary alleviate? This was crowned by a modesty in
behavior that was actually more cunning than timid. For, in the final
analysis, it was she who profited the most from the fact that her
installation’s ambitious results were not endangered by any unnecessary
effort.
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Pipilotti Rist,
I Couldn't Agree
With You More, 1999, audio video-installation (video still)
Courtesy
of the artist and Hauser & Wirth Zürich London
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Pipilotti Rist, born 1962 in Grabs in the canton of St.
Gallen, arrived at art via pop music. In the late ’80s, while she was
still studying at the Schule für
Gestaltung in Basel, she created stage designs for rock concerts and
produced music videos for local bands. In 1988 she joined the women’s band Les
Reines Prochaines and recorded several fairly shrill records with
them, including hellgrüne Lyrik (light-green poetry) in 1992
and Lob Ehre Ruhm Dank (praise honor fame thanks) in 1993/94, until
leaving the "Next Queens" in 1994.
Pipilotti
Rist, Das Zimmer (The Room), 1994/2000,
installation
view at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen,
Photo
Stefan Rohner
Courtesy the
artist and Hauser & Wirth Zürich London
This
background might explain why Pipilotti Rist so easily appropriates
elements from pop culture, such as the idea of the star cult, to emphasize
the entertainment aspect of her art. It also explains her affinity to the
sweeping gesture, the digital pogo of a popular clip aesthetic, to intense
colors and a relaxed and joyful sensuousness. And this is conveyed in her
videos not only visually and acoustically, but also through her treatment
of the exhibition space, such as with the mattress camp she installed in
the baroque church nave of San
Stae for the Venice
Biennale of 2005.
Pipilotti
Rist, Deine Raumkapsel (Your Space-Capsule), 2006,
audio
video installation,
Photo
Barbara Gerny
Courtesy the
artist and Hauser & Wirth Zürich London
Rist’s
approach is implicitly political. But she is also conscious of the
contradictions inherent in the art establishment’s aesthetic reception, as
became clear in her extended conversation with the head curator of the
Stockholm Konsthall
Magasin 3, Richard
Julin, who already presented a one-person show of the artist’s works
from February to June of this year. "I’m interested in art’s democratic
aspects," says Rist, "but I thrive on fetishism." It’s also possible that
her approach is more accessible in Japan than in Europe. The extremely
refined traditional Japanese high culture also bears a strong tendency
towards fetishism, which is clear in modern Japan’s no less sophisticated
everyday and consumerist culture, beginning with fashion and carrying to
music, comics, computer games, and even to pornography.
This is why
it’s so important that the installation The Room from 1995 is
included in the Hara Museum exhibition in Tokyo. With this work, Pipilotti
Rist, whose bizarre first name is a remix of Pippi
Longstocking and her Christian name Charlotte, sends visitors on the
trail of Jonathan Swift’s
Gulliver, as it were, on a satirical journey to the land of the
giants, which is today the land of the entertainment industry and its
producers. The real joke of the installation is the gigantic remote that
is nearly impossible to use. In contrast with the image of a careless
channel zapper, this monstrous device imparts a feeling of sheer
helplessness. Yet when visitors have finally climbed up onto the
larger-than-life sofa next to the huge standing lamp or the no less
colossal armchair, they finally feel – shrunken down to child size – quite
comfortable in their voyeuristic regression. This ambivalence between
criticism and reconciliation is what characterizes the work of Pipilotti
Rist.
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