Pickelporno

Pickelporno

1992 · 12 min · ★ 5.8 · Documentary

In this visual evocation of sex and sexuality, a man and woman stage an elaborately choreographed courtship ritual, edited with Rist's usual attention to the syntax of mass media. As a driving bass sample plays, a surveillance camera makes low-flying journeys across the bodies of the actors, yielding images at once familiar and distancing, a strategy in keeping with Rist's desire "to propose images of sexuality rather than to analyze the pros and the cons of pornography."

Directed by Pipilotti Rist

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(Absolutions) Pipilotti's Mistakes

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(Absolutions) Pipilotti's Mistakes

(Absolutions) Pipilotti's Mistakes · 1988

(Absolutions) Pipilotti's Mistakes

MovieDocumentary

Precisely edited to the start-stop rhythm of a martial beat and post-punk rock music, Absolutions glories in organized disjunction, juxtaposing images of the artist collapsing to the ground with bursts of wildly scrambled electronic distortion.

Pepperminta

Pepperminta · 2009

Pepperminta is an anarchist of the imagination. She lives in a futuristic rainbow villa and according to her own rules. Colors are the young woman's best friends and strawberries are her pets. She knows the most amazing remedies to free people of their fears. Pepperminta's wish is for everyone to see the world in her favorite colors. Werwen, a young plump and shy man yet whose sex appeal Pepperminta finds highly attractive, and the beautiful Edna, who talks to tulips, join her on her passionate mission. These three musketeers of a different kind set out to fight for a more humane world. Wherever the gang appears, everything is turned upside down and people's lives are transformed in the most miraculous and wondrous of ways.

I'm a Victim of This Song

I'm a Victim of This Song · 1995

I'm a Victim of This Song

MovieFantasyMusic

With I'm a Victim of this Song, Rist takes up the concept of the "cover" version, in which one performer does a version of another's song, and gives it her own twist. Starting with music from Chris Isaak's hit single Wicked Game, she adds her own sung and screamed versions of the lyrics, accompanied by effects-manipulated, diaristic video images. The result is an art-world "cover" of a popular artifact, with a woman's voice reinterpreting the male original, and a vivid illustration of the consumer's claim to own and interpret media images.

Stories on Human Rights

Stories on Human Rights · 2008

Stories on Human Rights

MovieRomanceDrama

20 short films about human rights.

Blutclip

Blutclip · 1993

Rist's body is the canvas in this surreal montage. Unflinching displays of the artist's own menstrual blood are juxtaposed with images of gemstones, while swooping, close-up shots of Rist's arms and legs are followed by archival footage of lunar fly-bys, suggesting the ease with which visual culture has abstracted the female body into a beautiful but alien natural phenomenon.

Sexy Sad I

Sexy Sad I · 1987

In this détourned music video, Rist trains her camera on the nude male body, challenging the tropes of the form and of pop culture in general. Her anonymous male subject is more puppet than star player as he flails helplessly, chasing a receding camera, accompanied by a cut-and-paste remix of The Beatles' Sexy Sadie. Supersaturated colors and a woodland setting further serve to naturalize the surreal scenario.

Ever Is Over All

Ever Is Over All · 1997

Ever Is Over All

Ever Is Over All envelops viewers in two slow-motion projections on adjacent walls. In one a roving camera focuses on red flowers in a field of lush vegetation. The spellbinding lull this imagery creates harmonizes with the projection to its left, which features a woman in sparkling ruby slippers promenading down a car-lined street. The fluidity of both scenes is disrupted when the woman violently smashes a row of car windshields with the long-stemmed flower she carries. As the vandal gains momentum with each gleeful strike of her wand, an approaching police officer smiles in approval, introducing comic tension into this whimsical and anarchistic scene. –MoMA

Rainwoman (I Am Called a Plant)

Rainwoman (I Am Called a Plant) · 1999

Rainwoman (I Am Called a Plant)

This sensual, slow-motion video installation shows the artist, with her shocking-pink hair, lying naked on the rain-soaked earth.

Supersubjektiv

Supersubjektiv · 2001

Supersubjektiv traces Rist’s longing for connection in an increasingly digital and globalized world.

Mother Floor

Mother Floor · 1996

A constantly moving camera dives deep into Rist's mouth and pops out of her anus, only to whirl back up to her open mouth - giving you the sensation of being swallowed and expelled, swallowed and expelled, into infinity.

Lungenflügel

Lungenflügel · 2009

MovieDocumentary

Presented across three screens, Lungenflügel (Lobe of the Lung) 2009 is an immersive video installation, lasting just over fifteen minutes. It depicts a luxurious valley in which the two main characters, a naked woman and a pig, wander. The human and the animal are put on the same plane, each appearing on one of the facing screenings, left and right of the central projection. The woman crawls on all fours, eating apples straight from the grass, in a choreography that very closely emulates the movements of the swine. As the work progresses, the footage becomes more abstract, filmed partly underwater in hues of vibrant red and partly in fields of brightly coloured tulips.

Pixel Forest

Pixel Forest · 2016

Each pixel is separated like an exploded screen, set in a chaotic way into the space. The video has a whole movement in the room, as one three dimensional image. The experience resembles the brain, working with electromagnetic waves and low voltage information.

Lullaby

Lullaby · 2002

‘It’s springtime’, a little bird stealing the filaments of my window screen reminded me this morning. ‘The sun in shining, the sky is blue, the trees are blossoming pink flowers and there is a wide world to be explored…what are you doing indoors?’ This 2002 video by artist Pipilotti Rist seems to be proposing a similar criticism in her reframing of concepts of time, season and the human lifespan.

大皮膚 SKI-NY

大皮膚 SKI-NY · 2022

大皮膚 SKI-NY

Metal textures flow into cellular structures.

I Want to See How You See

I Want to See How You See · 2003

I Want to See How You See

A lyrical tale of a witch's coven is played over images of a person where each body part symbolically represents an area of the world. Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist explores the macrocosm of humanity in this video, art and music combination.

Oasis Dance, Sipping My Desert--Santa Fe, New Mexico

Oasis Dance, Sipping My Desert--Santa Fe, New Mexico · 1998

Oasis Dance, Sipping My Desert--Santa Fe, New Mexico

During the party offered for Halloween at the Nobel Laureate, Murray Gell-Mann in Santa Fe, Michele and Pipilotti enter a back room...

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Meet the Patels

Meet the Patels · 2014

Meet the Patels

MovieRomanceComedy

Finding love is never easy. For Ravi Patel, a first generation Indian-American, the odds are slim. His ideal bride is beautiful, smart, funny, family-oriented, kind and—in keeping with tradition—Indian (though hopefully raised in the US). Oh, and her last name should be Patel because in India, Patels usually marry other Patels. And so at 30, Ravi decides to break up with his American girlfriend (the one who by all accounts is perfect for him except for her red hair and American name) and embark on a worldwide search for another Patel longing to be loved. He enlists the help of his matchmaker mother, attends a convention of Patels living in the US and travels to wedding season in India. Witty, honest and heartfelt, this comedy explores the questions with which we all struggle: What is love? What is happiness? And how in the world do we go about finding them?

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