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More Hysteria, Please
R
ICHARD FOREMAN

Psychoanalysis?
A
DRIAN DANNATT

Matrix
J
ACQUES-ALAIN MILLER

The Pre-session of Ricki Lake
G
ARY DAUPHIN

The Lesbian Session
S
LAVOJ ZIZEK

Poste Restante
R
APHAEL RUBINSTEIN

Butch Morris
A
LESSANDRO CASSIN

PIPILOTTI RIST

MARINA ABRAMOVIC


























        

Pipilotti Rist

 

Here is the Korean bed of moss
over there is Mount Harakiri
there the nail factory
further right the American bungalow
snow climbs up the pane
some parents' home or other
there is the frozen lake

Pipilotti Rist speaks of flying in the twilight through a street with her backpack propeller at a height of 25 meters.

She can see into all houses.

-Here four people sit down to eat. There a child crawls on a red carpet. Further left three adults discuss the arrangement of pictures in a catalogue. There two kiss under a bluish light. There someone tinkers on a model ship. Most have the television running.

She quickens her flight. Someone else is seated behind her on the luggage rack.

-Our eyes, a blood-fueled camera. Once more we are enthused by multifarious life. We digest impressions directly, or, at a pinch, register them on magnetic tape. I behold our organic muddy world and simultaneously remember, way back in the part of the brain for my right visual field, the strange design their neighbor's former television set had and the tree between our houses. It is funny; everyone has neighbors and everyone remembers their television sets and their backyards.

The man seated behind her is a wild dog. Now he sees a tree, pees on it and the tree lights up, the leaves become monitor screens that gleam and flicker bewitchingly. He feeds them rhythmic picture sequences from the player; this is the chlorophyll dissolved in water, the electric cables are the roots...

The garden's seasons change in mini-seconds. This is the way you prolong your life. Salvation lies in repetition!

They bought themselves a kilogram of apples. The man has eaten every video innovation-he has no fear of machines; machines are basically stupid. On b/w documentary photos he works with an innocent, child-like, earnest smile. One just has to kiss him. Because of the nostalgia-laden era, he is sentimentally blessed and can get away with anything. He plays on video boards or with digital effects as on a color piano. Without any respect for technology he rides into the sun.

We quietly fly on through the cabled suburbs. The world in front, in back of, or between the window and TV panes. Video is the synthesis of music, language, painting, movement, mangy mean pictures, time, sexuality, lighting, hectic action, and technology. Spectators and the video artists, they love video, they love it with all its disadvantages-the poor resolution because of a reduction from 560 x 720 dots. Even because of it. It kick-starts our phantasy and, behind our eyeballs, turns into an orgy of sensation and imagination. The monitor is the glowing easel where pictures are painted on the glass from behind. The screen is a magic lamp. The machine throws pictures at us that we recognize from behind our eyelids: pictures from our unconscious when, for instance, we are half awake, euphoric, nostalgic, or nervous.

We now change places. The man over the steering wheel and I take my seat on the luggage rack. Soon its dark. Turn on the power:

Fear is a butcher
I am a reptile
Come; bountiful spirit, impregnate me
Nature gave me hands
I give them back to her
Come, bountiful spirit, impregnate me

The text is a summary after Pipilotti Rists' Introduction, in: Nam June Paik: Jardine Illumine, Zurich, 1993

 


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