(Entlastungen) Pipilottis Fehler

1988

SD PAL, 4:3, Sound, 11'00''

(Absolutions) Pipilotti’s Mistakes
The mistakes of the machines are dancing with the failures of Rist’s character.

(Entlastungen) Pipilottis Fehler <(Absolutions) Pipilotti's Mistakes>
1988
Duration: 11’18”

This video comes from the initial period of Pipilotti Rist’s career, where at the time, the artist was experimenting with the technical possibilities of video and exploited its limitations and technical faults creatively, as this work shows. Accompanied by brisk drumbeats, we are shown a woman falling, slipping off a wall, and being immersed in water – but there is hardly a scene that is not distorted, fragmented, or played too quickly or too slowly. These extreme modifications of the image challenge our habitual ways of seeing things. To expose yourself to ‘Absolutions, Pipilotti’s Mistakes’ (1988) is take up a challenge as a viewer.

Throughout the video, Rist speaks a monologue as if through a megaphone and directs the failing woman. The voice seems to pause the playback and even to black out the screen. The first lines of the monologue: "I see. You see. I see you see," refer to video as a medium, because "video" is a Latin word meaning "I see". In addition, Rist is alluding to the combination of vision, subjectivity and the camera view. Can we ever know how other people see us and the world?

Adapted from text by: Mirjam Varadinis (MV), Änne Söll (ÄS), Katharina Ammann (KA), Eveline Schüep (ES) and Andrea Fischer-Schulthess

Photo cover credit: © Pipilotti Rist – Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, Luhring Augustine and videoart.ch /