I'm a Victim of This Song

Elisabeth Charlotte Rist (born June 21, 1962 in Grabs, Sankt Gallen, Switzerland) is a well-known video artist. She lives and works in Zurich and Los Angeles.

Elisabeth Charlotte Rist was born in 1962 in Grabs, Sankt Gallen, in Switzerland. Since her childhood she has been nicknamed Pipilotti. The name refers to the novel Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren.

Rist studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Vienna, through 1986. She later studied video at the School of Design (Schule für Gestaltung) in Basel, Switzerland. In 1997 her work was first featured in the Venice Biennial, where she was awarded the Premio 2000 Prize. From 1988 through 1994 she was member of the music band and performance group Les Reines Prochaines. From 2002 to 2003, she was invited by Professor Paul McCarthy to teach at UCLA as a visiting faculty member. From 2005 to 2009 she worked on her first feature film, Pepperminta.

During her studies Pipilotti Rist began making super 8 films. Her works generally last only a few minutes, and contained alterations in their colors, speed, and sound. Her works generally treat issues related to gender, sexuality, and the human body.

In contrast to those of many other conceptual artists, her colorful and musical works transmit a sense of happiness and simplicity. Rist’s work is regarded as feminist by some art critics. Her works are held by many important art collections worldwide.

In I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much (1986) Rist dances before a camera in a black dress with uncovered breasts. The images are often monochromatic and fuzzy. Rists repeatedly sings “I’m not the girl who misses much,” a reference to the first line of the song “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” by the Beatles. As the video approaches its end, the image becomes increasingly blue and fuzzy and the sound stops.

Rist achieved notoriety with Pickelporno (Pimple porno) (1992), a work about the female body and the sexual excitation. The fisheye camera moves over the bodies of a couple. The images are charged by intense colors, and are simultaneously strange, sensual, and ambiguous.

Ever is Over All (1997) shows in slow-motion a young woman walks along a city street, smashing the windows of parked cars with a large hammer in the shape of a tropical flower. At one point a police officer greets her. The audio video installation has been purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Rist’s nine video segments titled Open My Glade were played once every hour on a screen at Times Square in New York City, an project of the Messages to the Public program, which was founded in 1980.

Pipilotti Rist currently lives with her common law partner Balz Roth, with whom she has a son, named Himalaya. —Wikipedia