‘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:

• Jeroen Eisinga, Poor Sheep, 1997
• Pipilotti Rist, I'm Not the Girl Who Misses Much, 1986
• Klaas Kloosterboer, 01106 - Ballast, 2001
• Lernert & Sander, CDEFGABC, 2009
• Johannes Langkamp, Videosketches, 2012
• Anne-lise Coste, Tram performance, 1997

More information:

Jeroen Eisinga, Poor Sheep, 1997, 16 mm film transferred on SD video (colour, sound), Purchase: 2001
Jeroen Eisinga (Delft 1966) makes short films. The museum recently bought his most recent work, ‘Springtime’. ‘Poor Sheep’ shows a sheep lying on its back in a meadow, unable to right itself unaided. The animal’s intestines press against its lungs, from which it will eventually suffocate. We hear the sheep anxiously gasping for breath. You want to help the animal to correct itself, but you cannot. Eisinga forces the viewer into the role of voyeur, confronting him or her with feelings of powerlessness.

Pipilotti Rist, I'm Not the Girl Who Misses Much, 1986, Digitalised Betacam, Donation: Pipilotti Rist 2009
The early works of Pipilotti Rist (Grabs 1962) quickly became classics of video art. They are characterised by a strong connection with popular culture, music and television. The human body and images of femininity are also recurring themes. In ‘I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much’ we see Pipilotti Rist dancing and singing. She repeatedly paraphrases John Lennon’s opening line from the Beatles song ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’ (1968). By alternating the speed of the soundtrack, Rist’s half-naked performance seems like a parody of music video culture.

Klaas Kloosterboer, 01106 - Ballast, 2001, DVD, Donation: Klaas Kloosterboer 2010
All the works of Klaas Kloosterboer (Zuid- en Noord-Schermer 1959) refer to painting. In the film ‘Ballast’ he ridicules painting and its art-historical traditions. Two enormous balls, made from grey plastic, are dragged along behind the artists’ car in a typical Dutch landscape. Kloosterboer seems to take vengeance on his own failed creations, thus referring to the Greek hero Achilles, who dragged the dead Hector behind his chariot.

Lernert & Sander, CDEFGABC, 2009, DVCAM, 2.19 min, Commissioned by MTV, Courtesy: the artist
The Amsterdam-based art duo Lernert & Sander (Lernert Engelberts (Leerdam, 1977) and Sander Plug (Alkmaar, 1969)) have made a range of films over the past few years, many of them commissioned. Perhaps their best-known work is the video for the track ‘Elektrotechnique’ by the Dutch rap act De jeugd Van Tegenwoordig (The Youth of Today). For film ‘CDEFGABC’, commissioned by MTV Europe, they created a double glass harp and taught themselves to play this instrument, invented in the eighteenth century. Instead of playing a piece of classical music, they chose a twentieth-century pop classic: ‘No limit’ by 2Unlimited.

Johannes Langkamp, Videosketches, 2012, 4.23 min, Courtesy: the artist
In 2011 Johannes Langkamp (Laer 1985) set himself the task of making a video every day for a month. They are mostly short, clumsily recorded films in which he creates visual illusions with slapstick humour. He followed this up with his ‘Videosketchbook’, a series of short films in which the camera itself is the main subject: crushed between lift doors or mounted to an electric drill. Langkamp gives his imagination full rein in a childish and simple manner: a box becomes a bird and a rotating lamp makes the world turn round.

Anne-lise Coste, Tram performance, 1997, VHS, digitalised, 9 min, Camera: Toslin Orgasawara, Courtesy: Ellen de Bruijne Projects
The press release for the most recent exhibition by Anne-Lise Coste (Marseille 1972) in the Netherlands contained an enthusiastic statement by the artist herself: “…and I go, happens what happens…”. Rebellion rules in Coste’s works on paper, canvas and video. So too in ‘Tramperformance’, recorded by the artist running against two trams in Zürich. The eventual winner is (almost) predictable, but there she goes: happens what happens.