Courtesy the artist

Still from Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters) (2008). Multichannel video projection.

Photo by Rafael Zubler

Pipilotti Rist in Zurich, 2006

December 2008 Field Guide

Anri Sala

Predrive: After Technology

Experimenta Folklore

Javier Ramirez Limon

Indian Art

Mark Manders

Klara Liden

Andre Kertesz: On Reading

Ron Arad

Transpop: Korea Vietnam Remix

Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans

Ree Morton

Emotional Drawing

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Pipilotti Rist's celebratory, chromatic videos and multimedia installations often chronicle her moving through a world of outrageous hues and even more outrageous blooms. In one of her works — the 1997 video Ever Is Over All, which was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York — the Swiss artist ecstatically smashes the windows of parked cars with a large tropical flower. Now, a decade later, MoMA has commissioned Rist to create a video and sound installation that will soak its second-floor atrium in 25-foot-high moving images. While Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters) may sound like the title of a thumping '90s house jam, the artist explained to us why the piece will prove to be more than simply aerobic. — QL

How did you come up with the title Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters)? How does it relate to the piece?

The volume number refers to architect Yoshio Taniguchi's atrium size. Suddenly such an oversize room in space-efficient Manhattan opens up and gives us the potential to gather, interact, and move like crazy. Pour Your Body Out means literally to bend from the hips, stretch the sinews, and look (backward) through your legs as if you could water the floor beneath you with your upper body and head. That's a perfect perspective to see the installation from.

What is the installation about? What kind of imagery will feature in it?

It speaks of human ambivalence and our fight with it, performed by Ewelina Guzik. She wants to be human. The human wants to be an apple, wants to be a pig. She wants to be an earthworm in a tulip field, and a snail in a lost esplanade. The human collects her menstruation blood in a silver chalice, which could be a basis for the ultimate essence. The sound varies from music to subtle bodily sounds and is made by Anders Guggisberg and Roli Widmer.

What does MoMA mean to you? How do you think your piece will affect or be affected by its sleek new building?

My team and I like MoMA's popular and democratic status, with so many people visiting it. I could have tried to break Taniguchi's ethereal architecture, but even more I wanted to melt into it. With the piece's moving colored lights, the rooms are caressed and the walls opened. On the round sofa or on the floor, we can cooperate, relax, reflect, sit, sum, and go on.

To that end, how would your perfect audience for the installation view it?

They would be rolling and lying around, dancing, singing. They would lose their unnecessary fears. Many children would roll on the walls and jump around. OK, that would presuppose a perfect installation.

What is the first thing you want to do in New York when you are done installing Pour Your Body Out?

I will cry a bit with exhaustion, joy, and fear while going for a walk along the river.

What do you think of the concept of chromophobia? Do you think your body of work has managed to subvert the chromophobic impulses of today's artworld?

I agree there is a widespread loathing of colors. So far as I could subvert that impulse, as you nicely say, I think I have. The piece at MoMA will be another test. My colors are made of light, in contrast to the colors on an object, which you need an additional light to see. I am extremely interested in the perception of colors. Most photos, videos, and films are technically altered to be less colorful than they are in reality, so as to avoid strong tints on white human skin. And we are already used to the desaturation in the media. So my strong colors are not an exaggeration, as the colors in nature will always be much more colorful. Just close your eyes, and you will see. Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters), Museum of Modern Art, New York, through Feb. 2, moma.org

"Pipilotti Rist" originally appeared in the December 2008 / January 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' December 2008 / January 2009 Table of Contents.