M HKA Ensembles

° 1962

Born in Rheintal (CH), lives in Zurich (), lives in Los Angeles ().

At the end of the 1980s, Elisabeth Charlotte Rist was part of a new generation of visual artists who were specifically trained in video technology. During her studies, she changed her name to Pipilotti Rist, after Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren's headstrong character. With their jump cuts, oversaturated colours and nervous imagery, her videos echo the MTV aesthetic. Still, Rist is constantly looking for ways to challenge and manipulate the conventions of the videoclip medium – such as image refinement and sound synchronisation. Her distorted images are part of her contemporary form of feminism, which not only replaces male protagonists with female bodies, but also exposes the medium's social conditioning – of gender and race – and underlines that video is not a neutral technology.