Pickelporno

1992

SD Pal, 4:3, Sound, 12'00''

A journey right behind and in front of the eyelids.

Пътуване точно зад и пред клепачите.

Pickelporno / Pimple Porno

What might an alternative porn movie look like? An answer to this question is given by Pipilotti Rist's 1992 video, Pimple Porno. In search of a new form of eroticism, Rist presents us with a whimsical, strange body-world that clearly centres on sex, but without applying the standards of pornography. In Pimple Porno, deriving pleasure from watching others means playful interaction with images of the body that do not reduce sex to a mere act, but rather show the full, ambiguous and multi-sensory spectrum of sexuality.
The video's storyline is as simple as that of any classic, short, heterosexual sex flick: man and woman meet and have sex, with the climax of sexual intercourse coming shortly before the end of the film. In Pimple Porno, it is the woman who initiates foreplay, and what then unfolds before our eyes is an associative sequence of images that reveal their meaning mainly through nature metaphor. Close to the end, for example, when a lightly rocking melon, slit open, is shown immediately after rotating breasts, or when a finger digs into the melon with relish, it is clear that collage and visual metaphor play a large part in Pimple Porno. Add to that the intense colours, the distorted and fragmented close-ups of the body and the interspersion of humorous accessories, and you have a world of pleasure without equal.
Male and female bodies are transformed into a single, all-encompassing, erogenous zone in which tongues, breasts, penises and vaginas float disembodied, melt and merge. Here a man's body is not a sex machine, nor is a woman's body merely an object of desire. Instead, both are integrated in a landscape of the body in which the boundaries between the sexes dissolve; they merge with their surroundings and with each other in a way that renders any separation between body and object, or background and foreground, impossible.

Text for Audioguide: «PIPILOTTI RIST – YOUR SALIVA IS MY DIVING SUIT IN THE OCEAN OF PAIN», Kunsthaus Zürich, February 26, 2016 to May 8 2016

Authors: Mirjam Varadinis (MV), Änne Söll (ÄS), Katharina Ammann (KA), Eveline Schüep (ES) und Andrea Fischer-Schulthess

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