Pipilotti Rist is a video installation artist that makes immersive, emotional videos. Her main inspiration is representing the idea of the archetypal love-starved woman. To create emotional sensations within her installations, Rist uses ambiguity to pull viewers into scenes and feel an emotional expressiveness. Images and sound layer upon each other and mirrored projections create enrapturing kaleidoscopic effects. Rist stated, “Expressiveness or tackiness comes much closer to the truth than a perfectly sharp, slick representation.” In this way, Rist careful considers content in terms of the formal qualities of her work. She generates the appropriate sensations through her editing and camera quality, sets, songs, etc.
One of the works of Rist's that I find compelling is Sip My Ocean (1996). A sensual seascape is presented to the viewer in mirrored projection in a corner of a room, creating an immersive video experience. The artist swims in the water, within the fantasy-like setting, but her movements seem abrupt in comparison to the waving sea grass. The song playing is the artist singing “Wicked Game”. At points, the song is sung evenly, but at a turning point, Rist’s voice changes to yelling. It is at this same point in the video that domestic objects (such as a teacup and television set) fall into the fantasy. The items entering do not give a sense of comfort, but seem like tossed memories of a broken relationship, falling away. Eventually, the song returns to its dreamlike state and Rist continues swimming in her fantasy. Just like the love-starved woman moving on towards her next relationship
My personal interests with Rist do not collide on a conceptual level (though I greatly admire the aims of her work). I am looking to her as a source artist because of her use of a video environment that is full of ambiguity. Often times, her work hits the viewer visually before they ever undercover its meaning. In my dealings with nature, it is often the visual that allows viewers entrance into my work. Rist also plays with scale from entire room projections that overlap to only 1 inch view points to videos. Scale is something I am constantly considering, especially in regards to the original source of observation.
Sources: In the Making by Linda Weintraub Regarding Beauty by Neil Benezra
Hans Op de Beeck
I had never heard or seen Hans Op de Beeck's artwork prior to the D.C. fieldtrip. His video Staging Silence (2009) is currently playing at the Hirshhorn Museum. The work is filmed in black and white and is accompanied by music that both haunts and enchants. Throughout the video, archetypal landscapes and scenes are created through the manual manipulation of props. Hands pop in and out of frames deliberately setting up scenes and backdrops. As a viewer, you watch these backdrops form, see their staging, but immediately fall for the illusion they created once the hands have stopped manipulating and entering the frame. Only to then be surprised when the scene is dismantled. Over and over again, as a viewer you continue to believe in the spaces that are created before you even with the viewpoint of the illusion's creation. I was fascinated by this continual play and interaction on the viewer's senses and our desire to believe in what we see. I found that this work was even stronger in creating credible illusion because of its use of the camera. Even though we know photographs and movies are staged, we continue to believe they are reality, transparent to the world we live in.
There was also a great elegance to the filming and editing of the work. It at first felt opposite to the work of Pipilotti Rist, but there are obvious moments of overlapping of images that feel connected to her process of merging images. I personally feel that my own work will fall between these two artists--connecting with both.