Pipilotti Rist

What a femenist woman! Watching her video was just as intense as some of the stuff that we have watched in class this semester. But, I sufferred through it and found some of the things interesting enough to blog about. So here we go...

During "I'm not the girl who misses much" I enjoyed watching the different video editing techniques. The screen looks like a heart monitor when Pipilotti is jumping around, which corresponded to the video speeding up. I was wondering why her boobs were sticking out, but if this class has taught me one thing it is to ignore nudety because it is all artistic in some way.

Another part that interested me was when Pipilotti was video taped falling to the ground in the middle of the street. The sounds that were edited into the film sounded like abstract gunshots. If I had to guess, I'd say that this is a statement about women in other countries who are sentenced to death for breaking the rules. Her acting was like a public execution, since it was in the middle of the street.

When she dives into the pool it immediatley reminded me of the Bill Viola documentary that we watched in class the other day. Lots of his video art focused on drowning and water because he nearly drowned as a child. Likewise, Pipilotti appears to be drowning in her video. Which is weird, because she executes a perfect dive when she enters the pool. Someone who dives so nicely and then can't swim couldnt have learned to dive without learning to swim. So maybe either the person shown rescuing her was overreacting, or Pipilotti was just trying to drown herself and ended up freaking out. But anyway, the editing at this part was really cool. having the pool water in a separate square from the edge of the frame made it seem like a picture of a pool placed in the center, instead of just a small shot of the water.

The woman with the blood all over herself was enough to make me dry heave. HOWEVER, once again the video editing effects blew me away. The way that the woman was spinning and disappearing with the earth in the background was pretty cool. It looked like she was floating in space. Maybe that's what Pipilotti was going for? because although ive never been naked in space, I assume that i would bleed or something from the pressure...But who knows.

Whats with the robot looking woman with the polka dotted shirt collar? I'm pretty sure she didn't blink once. Which probably could have counted for endurance which, as we all know, is necessary in performance art. It looked like there was a video of a tv screen over this image, but it was very faint so I wasn't sure. Either way, the layering effect was really cool.

Overall, lots of nudety and body parts. I'm not really sure how I feel about it, except that I thought it was kind of weird. But if this class has taught me anything, its that anything can be considered art and we just need to be open minded and accept it unless we want to be constantly grossed out.

Video Art Project

While deciding what to do for my video art project I was really stressed over finals and everything, so I decided to use that as the inspiration for my video. I dragged the camera through plants on campus, and the effect was really chaotic. The switching between different types of plants represents how I was jumping from the work of one class to the next, and there didn't seem to be any end in sight. I edited in some different colors just to add to the chaos and make it seem more unrealistic. The flower at the end represents how relaxed I feel now that finals are DONE, and when this class is over it will be officially summertime for me! There's no audio, only because I didn't know how to make my own. Enjoy!