I'm Not the Girl Who Misses Much
Performing an increasingly frantic dance, which is intermittently slowed down and sped up, a young woman sings the phrase, "I'm not the girl who misses much," an altered line from The Beatles’ song "Happiness is a Warm Gun." As her voice is progressively modulated, the video is manipulated through vertical and horizontal freeze frames that render the performer, the artist Pipilotti Rist, both agent and object of technology. Rist’s breakthrough video has often been interpreted as a feminist response to sexist music videos. It can also be seen as a tribute to Yoko Ono (whose early video work made an impact on Rist) and, according to the artist, as a kind of personal exorcism. Rist has commented, too, on the fact that in the mid 1980s, before everyone in the world could produce content and make it public, people responded to the DIY nature of the work.
Artwork Details
- Title: I'm Not the Girl Who Misses Much
- Artist: Pipilotti Rist (Swiss, born Rheintal 1962)
- Date: 1986
- Medium: Single-channel digital video, transferred from video tape, color, sound, 7 min., 41 sec.
- Classification: Variable Media
- Credit Line: Purchase, Henry Nias Foundation Inc. Gift, 2023
- Object Number: 2023.21
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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