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Themesicon: navigation pathCyborg Bodiesicon: navigation pathUnruly Bodies
 
Ever is Over All (Rist, Pipilotti), 1997
 
 
 

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the embryo is accompanied by car noises off-screen and turns into the shot of Trash Girl driving. Throughout the entire series, pictures of the digestive tract fade in regularly, anatomy-book illustrations with specially marked intestines. The camera enters the esophagus like a tunnel, chyme rolls down like the liquids that Trash Girls spits at attackers, or the sludge which she comes from, teeth shine where there used to be a heap of stones. Liquids and flesh, mire and rubble mix and mingle.

«White Trash Girl» shows a state of war; in «Law of Desire» this is underscored by war scenes rhythmically cut in. To live means to survive here, and White Trash Girl can only manage to survive because she takes her life into her own hands in a radical way, using a network of friends to create a wide safety zone around her body, a toxic chemical weapon. That much is clear: police would not do anything for her safety, they guard the white middle class and violently persecute minorities.

Female unruliness in the context of streets, cars, and the police is also the subject of the video «Ever is Over All» by Pipilotti Rist, even though in

 

contrast to the projects discussed up to now, this video is less influenced by the aspect of the hybrid and cyborg-like composite. And yet the artist's pseudonym Pipilotti makes reference to the cheeky and independent Pippi Longstocking—a model for several generations of girls. It starts with a woman in a bright blue dress and red shoes strolling down a street. She is armed with a huge phalluslike flower which she uses to smash car windows as she saunters along laughingly. A policewoman approaches her but there is no fighting. The policewoman extends a friendly greeting to her and the racket continues happily. In contrast to Reeder's Angel, Rist's hooligan in the bright blue dress really seems to be heaven-sent, an angel with quite some potential for violence. However, the scene remains nice and innocuous. The impression is not only created by the seeming lightness of what she does and the lack of a really dangerous weapon, but also because of the obvious sisterhood that unites the hooligan and the law. The world is on the right track to becoming paradise—this is what it means. Away with the stinking vehicles, let's have flower-powerful sisterhood, ruling the world with charm. The

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