Pipilotti Rist
[Artist, b. 1962, Reinthal, Switzerland, lives in Zurich and Los Angeles.]
... if we suffer from certain pictures or if we don’t want to have specific pictures, we have to invent our own pictures and cannot start from zero.
Sexuality, eroticism and desire are important for all of us. But that is also the contradiction. How can we speak about pictures and, for example, say no to this way of representing a woman’s body? It’s also a camera-and-object problem, of who is really guiding the camera.
For me, it’s not important whether [subjects] are naked, half-naked, or dressed. What I’m more interested in is how they present themselves: if someone is half-naked and having self-confidence or you have the feeling that she has or he has control of the situation. She likes to do it. Then I have nothing against it. But it’s true that society doesn’t talk about such issues. They just talk about whether there is a breast or not, but for me it’s more interesting how the power game of camera and object is shown. And if it’s a cool picture.
Fifty years ago, the spoken word reigned, but during the last fifty years, the power has gone over to pictures.
Women are less interested in watching two people having sex than in understanding how and what these people are feeling when they are having sex. If you kiss someone, you want to know what the other person is feeling. So I want to find pictures that express what the other feels.
Should one be for or against pornography? I prefer to propose images of sexuality rather than to analyze the pros and the cons of pornography. Women are interested in erotics and sexuality, so I want to use my energy to propose images about that.
I always try to create equal power between the subject and the object, so as not to end up creating a relationship where the camera is here and the object out there. This is for me a very difficult and sensitive balance. When I produce a work, cut and frame images, I realize that spectators can identify with the images and almost forget that someone else actually made them. This would be the optimal situation. I don’t know whether I succeed in doing so, but that’s what I would like to have happen.
