‘Laat je haar neer’ (Let Your Hair Down) by Pipilotti Rist

The video installation entitled ‘Laat je haar neer’, a play on words that means both ‘let your hair down’ and ‘lay her down’, is on view in the stairwell in the entrance area.

To coincide with the successful exhibition ‘Elixir: the video organism of Pipilotti Rist’, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and H+F Patronage have commissioned Pipilotti Rist to create a permanent installation for the museum. The video installation entitled ‘Laat je haar neer’, a play on words that means both ‘let your hair down’ and ‘lay her down’, is constructed in the stairwell in the public foyer. 

Visitors climb into a rope net in which they lie back and watch Pipilotti Rist’s latest video above them. The ‘Laat je haar neer - initiation video’ is drifting between reason and dream, like the installation is floating between ground and sky. It is also possible to zap to other video art from Karin van Dam, John Bock, Yu-Chin Tseng, Joost Conijn and Fischli & Weiss, which is part of the museum collection.

H+F Patronage

The H+F Patronage (H+F Mecenaat), founded in 2005, is an exclusive partnership between Han Nefkens and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. The goal of the H+F Patronage is to stimulate contemporary art and artists on an international level, and to introduce them to a new audience. Click here for further information.

Current selection of videos:

Pipilotti Rist, When My Mother’s Brother Was Born It Smelled Like Wild Pear Blossom in Front of the Brown-burnt Sill, 1992

Yael Bartana, Ad de'lo Yoda (Until He Didn’t Know), 2003

David Claerbout, Reflecting Sunset, 2003

Cyprien Gaillard, The Lake Arches, 2007

Pipilotti Rist, Pickelporno, 1992

Jeroen Eisinga, The Idiot, 1999

More information:

Pipilotti Rist, Als der Bruder meiner Mutter geboren wurde, duftete es nach wilden Birnenblüten vor dem braungebrannten Sims (When My Mother’s Brother Was Born It Smelled Like Wild Pear Blossom in Front of the Brown-burnt Sill), 1992, digital Betacam, donation: Pipilotti Rist 2009
Footage of childbirth is framed by a winter mountain landscape. The cut, delivery and suturing are presented in an almost scientific manner. The matter-of-fact quality of the imagery contrasts with the title, which evokes the birth as a highly personal memory. The song is sung by Rist herself.

Yael Bartana, Ad de'lo Yoda (Until He Didn’t Know), 2003, mini DV transferred to DVD, purchase with support of: Mondriaan Stichting 2004
In ‘Ad de'lo Yoda’ Bartana recorded scenes from the Purim festival, in which the Jewish community celebrates its historical rescue from annihilation at the hands of the Persians. We see a parade of people dressed in biblical costumes through the crack in a door; the observer's perspective is aligned with that of a young boy whose back is visible in the foreground. The video is positioning the viewer as an outsider while, those in the parade are shown as a closed community.
David Claerbout, Reflecting Sunset, 2003, single channel video projection, black and white, silent, loan: H+F Mecenaat 2005
In this work by David Claerbout, the image initially seems to have been frozen as if in a photograph. Only after a while do the subtle changes of light and shadow become apparent. The film’s 38 minutes correspond with the actual time needed for the sun to pass over that part of the facade. Claerbout's work intensifies the spectator's perception: you are made aware that you are looking at an image.

Cyprien Gaillard, The Lake Arches, 2007, digi beta transferred to DVD, purchase with support of: Mondriaan Stichting 2008
What begins as an idyllic scene of a summertime dip, ends in painful disillusion. The shallow lake is revealed to be part of an artificial, postmodern concrete landscape.

Pipilotti Rist, Pickelporno, 1992, digi beta transferred to DVD, donation: Pipilotti Rist 2009
In this video Pipilotti Rist zooms in on individual parts of the body. Bold perspectives, breasts, eyes, toes, and pubic hair, swell to oversized and uncustomary dimensions. The camera assumes the perspective of the sexual partner, and with her macro-shots the artist pursues the question of how to make sexual feelings visible.

Jeroen Eisinga, The Idiot, 1999, 16 mm film, color with optical sound, purchase: 2000
This work shares its title with the novel by the Russian author Fjodor Dostoyevsky, in which the principle character is satirised for his naïve and trusting character, but is also the only honest person in a story full of grotesque and malicious lunatics. The anti-hero and anti-climax are frequently recurring tropes in Eisinga's films. ‘The Idiot’ was originally filmed on 16 mm film.