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In her video installation Ever Is Over All, Pipilotti Rist has gone where no man - and I mean men specifically - has gone before.
It only took about a bajillion years but finally someone has created a female gaze that wasn’t hushed and buried deep underground where no one could find it. This piece was actually awarded the Premio 2000 prize at the 1997 Venice Biennale.
In the video, a beautiful and seemingly sweet woman dressed in a long blue dress and bright red heels (very Dorothy in the land of Oz) walks/skips/flounces around swinging a beautiful tropical flower. She is all smiles and cakes and rainbows until she uses her beautiful flower (think Georgia O’Keeffe here) to smash the window of a parked car to smithereens. Meanwhile, the soundtrack plays birds chirping and a woman humming, which sounds a little horror movie-esque honestly. But rightfully so because it’s the patriarchy’s worst nightmare...a woman asserting her dominance using her lady flower as a cudgel (which seems phallic but it’s still a flower so go with it).
The video is projected at the corner of a room and so seemingly has two parts. A diptych if you will. One is the woman and the adjacent is a close up of the flower (the one that she is using to beat the sh*t out of cars) while they are growing in nature. You really can’t help but see the sexuality of these flowers. It has some serious home-made porno vibes.
The real kicker is when the woman walks right by a police officer (who is also female) and right when you think that she’s toast and is going straight to either jail or the loony bin, the officer smiles and salutes the woman. And it’s not like the officer didn’t see her, she was right there. If only Betty Friedan could be around to see this…
If you aren’t already sold on the badassery of Pipilotti Rist, you should know that Queen B, Bey, Sasha Fierce, Beyonce Knowles, the legend has copied Rist’s work meaning that she is more badass than Beyonce. If you’ve ever seen the music video for “Hold Up” from Lemonade, you can see the inspiration that she took from Pipilotti Rist. So when Beyonce says “bow down, bitches,” we know who to bow to.
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Here is what Wikipedia says about Ever Is Over All
Ever Is Over All is an audio visual installation by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist created in 1997.
Description
One wall of the over-corner projection shows a cheerful woman in a turquoise summer dress with high red shoes.
With swinging steps, she walks in slow motion along the sidewalk past parked cars. She swings a crested torch lily and smashes the glass panes of passenger doors with obvious pleasure, followed by a broad smile on her face. A passerby coming towards her looks at her with interest, but does not intervene. A policewoman overtakes her and greets her in a friendly manner.
On the other wall are close-ups of the crested torch lily, flowers and buds in bright colors. In the background a meadow turned 90 degrees to the right appears, on which a person is sitting. This video is not limited to the second wall, but overlaps with the first video.
The sound of the video was created by Anders Guggisberg and Pipilotti Rist. It consists of a slow, repetitive, simple melody, partly accompanied by humming, singing la-la-la and the sound of a pane of shattering glass.
The video showing the woman lasts four minutes, the other nine; both run in a loop.
The question of whether the artist herself plays the main role in this video was repeatedly raised, bringing the tradition of self-portrait into play. In interviews, however, Rist rejected the interpretation of her works as self-portraits; it should not matter whether she herself acts in the video. In an interview in 2001, the artist stated that the documentary filmmaker Silvana Ceschi played the leading role in Ever Is Over All. A photograph from the time of the production process, which is labeled accordingly, shows Rist's role: she can be seen on it as a darkly dressed person in pants, with glasses and a cap, filming the other person. The little woman in the red coat smiling at the protagonist is the artist's mother, Anna Rist. Also involved were: Ian Mathys, Aufdi Aufdermauer, Gabrielle Hächler, Tom Rist, Mich Hertig, Gian Wilhelm, Anahita Krzyzanowski, Martin Fischer, Donner Trepp, Christian Davi, Attila Panzel, Manuela Wirth, Brigitte Hofer, Garage Giuseppe Cannizzo, Serge Nyffeler, Meret and Maxi Mars Matter and Gregor Meier.
Check out the full Wikipedia article about Ever Is Over All
