In the video You Called Me Jacky, which she created in 1900, artist Pipilotti Rist films herself in a static shot lip-synching and playing air guitar to the 1973 track Jackie and Edna by singer-songwriter Kevin Coyne. [1] She films herself performing here, as she had previously done in the video I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much, to challenge the way in which pop stars were presented in music videos at that time.

At the beginning of the video, Rist appears, wearing an orange shirt, standing face on to the camera in front of a white wall, which serves as a projection surface. As the music starts and she begins her performance, a lateral tracking shot, filmed from a train and showing urban and rural landscapes, is projected onto the artist, causing her sometimes to virtually disappear from the image. This projection adds movement to the static shot of the video. It is superimposed on the figure of Rist while she continues to lip-synch. The artist places herself in the role of the performer of the song, replacing singer Kevin Coyne and presenting herself as though she were playing in her own music video. But in contrast to music videos broadcast on the television, where everything is controlled, Rist’s performance is very rough and ready, the artist sometimes hesitating, forgetting the lyrics and even stopping singing.

In this video, Rist plays on the approximations of her lip-synching and acting in the same way that she had exploited the malfunctions of video tape four years earlier in I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much. At the end of the video, she appears in an outfit and with a hairstyle that make her look like Madonna and takes up poses that the singer might have used in her own music videos. Her gestures are deliberately exaggerated to parody or vamp pop stars of the era. According to musicologist Emile Wennekes, Rist, in this imprecise performance, “seems to be making fun of the pop video clip genre in general, as well as the specific performative tradition of a musician in concert, especially the singer-songwriter,” [2] making direct reference to musician Kevin Coyne. The artist subverts the conventions of the music video to highlight the artificiality and false perfection of this format, particularly in its use of lip-synching, editing, and post-production, which clash with the authenticity conveyed by the figure of the singer-songwriter.

Using simple means, Rist delivers her own interpretation of the track, while offering a humorous critique of the music videos produced at that time. She was also unconsciously pre-empting the cover videos that have proliferated online since the mid-2000s, in which their creators film themselves in their bedroom in a static shot, often using the webcam of their computer, lip-synching to or covering their favorite song or other popular track.[3]

Marie Vicet, December 2024

Translated by Anne McDowall

[1] This track first appeared on the album Marjory Razorblade by singer Kevin Coyne. A cover version of the track by the artist was featured on the album Lob Ehre Ruhm Dank, released by pop band Les Reines Prochaines in 1993.

[2] See Emile Wennekes, “Compositions for a Visitor Who Might Arrive at any Minute: Music in the Work of Pipilotti Rist,” in Paul Kempers (ed.), Elixir: The Video Organism of Pipilotti Rist (Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 2009), p. 137.

[3] On this subject, see Nicolas Thély, Le tournant numérique de l’esthétique (Montpellier: Publie.net, 2011), p. 26.