Ever Is Over All

Left: Video installation, Kunsthalle Zürich, 1999
Photo: Alexander Troehler
Above: Stills of video installation tape
Courtesy Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zürich and Luhring Augustine, New York

Rist positively describes the negative aspects of femininity, which have been rejected by women themselves. She articulates her ideas with weightless images of love, death, everyday life, and fiction. Her unique style is a product of the pliant, sensual relationship between music and video art. Rist is also a band member and has designed the stage sets. Her video installation inspires body awareness in the audience as a totally new experience, different from large video clips shown on a huge screen. In Ever Is Over All, a young woman in a light blue dress merrily walks along the street with a huge, colorful, long-stemmed tropical flower in her hand. She smashes the flower into the windows of parked cars as she passes them. The combination of violent urban fantasy, romantic music, and destructive sound suggests the birth of a sophisticated visual language, expressing the direct, realistic senses of the MTV generation.