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Ever is Over All
Ever is Over All is a video installation with two sharply contrasting projections on adjacent walls accompanied by a melancholic melody. On the right, a large field of bright-red flowers, filmed in close-up with a roving camera. On the left, filmed in medium- and long-shot, a smiling young woman in a blue dress and red shoes. Walking toward the viewer in slow motion along a car-lined sidewalk, she suddenly raises what appears to be one of the blooms seen in the projection to the right, and, in a burst of inexplicable violence, uses it to smash the window of a parked vehicle. As she moves down the sidewalk and shatters another car window, a policewoman approaches and offers a friendly salute in passing. The anarchic young woman gleefully carries on breaking windows.
Fiction-versus-reality is an important theme for Rist, in whose work an odd combination of nightmare and magic prevails over the logic of common sense. In Ever is Over All, the artist juxtaposes the field and its flowers with her magically powerful wand, and transposes acts of aggression and annihilation into benevolent and creative ones.
Bio Pipilotti Rist
Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist (1962) is best known for creating experiential videos and installation art that often portrays self-portraits and singing. Rist’s multi-sensory work often transforms the architecture or environment of a white cube gallery into a more tactile, auditory, and visual experience. Culled from fairy tales, feminism, contemporary culture, and her own imagination, the artist's color-saturated, kaleidoscopic projections are a sophisticated visual amalgam of wit, humour, and irony.
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- This film was #78 in the “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025