Sexy sad I, 1987

Betacam numérique, PAL, couleur, son


In the woods, a naked man fights with Pipilotti Rist's camera. Surrealist video clip, the Beatle's Sexy Sadie clip is parodied by the artist who reverses the codes of traditional clips and transposes a man in the usual role of the 'sexy girl'.

 

Pipilotti Rist was born in 1962 in Grabs in German Switzerland. She lives in Zurich and Los Angeles. Producer, director and often protagonist in her videos, she is interested in television as a jewel of pop culture, rather than a basis for the critique of the media. She situates her work in the lineage of Nam June Paik and Andy Warhol. Pipilotti Rist works on contemporary subjects like that of the difference of sexes, the erogenous body, feminine identity. She often reinterprets famous melodies by composing new soundtracks. She conceives her works like clips, sour, sometimes aggressive, with the efficiency of commercial creators, although she introduces elements of slippage (scratches, blurs, shaky images, saturation, dissonance etc.) Brilliantly using the technical potential of her medium, she manipulates it, via technological processes, until obtaining effects that give the image an ambiguous status, oscillating between television, video and cinema.

Translated by Mia Stern, 2021