Pipilotti Rist

Rist's body is the canvas in this surreal montage. Unflinching displays of the artist's own menstrual blood are juxtaposed with images of gemstones, while swooping, close-up shots of Rist's arms and legs are followed by archival footage of lunar fly-bys, suggesting the ease with which visual culture has abstracted the female body into a beautiful but alien natural phenomenon.

The life and work of enigmatic Dutch/Californian conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader, who in 1975 disappeared under mysterious circumstances at sea in the smallest boat ever to cross the Atlantic. As seen through the eyes of fellow emigrant filmmaker René Daalder, the picture becomes a sweeping overview of contemporary art films as well as an epic saga of the transformative powers of the ocean.

A constantly moving camera dives deep into Rist's mouth and pops out of her anus, only to whirl back up to her open mouth - giving you the sensation of being swallowed and expelled, swallowed and expelled, into infinity.

A daytime fantasy featuring earth nymphs, this short video work is an adapted version of Rist's installation "I Couldn't Agree With You More" for screening purposes, and to watch lying down on your left side or turning monitor 90 degrees.

Precisely edited to the start-stop rhythm of a martial beat and post-punk rock music, Absolutions glories in organized disjunction, juxtaposing images of the artist collapsing to the ground with bursts of wildly scrambled electronic distortion.

With I'm a Victim of this Song, Rist takes up the concept of the "cover" version, in which one performer does a version of another's song, and gives it her own twist. Starting with music from Chris Isaak's hit single Wicked Game, she adds her own sung and screamed versions of the lyrics, accompanied by effects-manipulated, diaristic video images. The result is an art-world "cover" of a popular artifact, with a woman's voice reinterpreting the male original, and a vivid illustration of the consumer's claim to own and interpret media images.

This video art work features Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist lip-synching to Kevin Coyne's 1973 song 'Jacky and Edna', her image superimposed with fleeting images seen from the window of a moving train.

The film accompanies the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist around the world, shows her at work in her studio in Zurich as well as at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since she won the Duemila Prize at the Biennale di Venezia in 1997, Pipilotti Rist is an internationally recognized and renowned artist. For the first time, she lets a documentary filmmaker into her world, providing insight into her creative process, the development of projects and the collaboration with her team.