© Courtesy of the Artist, Hauser & Wirth and Luhring Augustine / BONO. Photo: © Florian Holzherr
Nordic Pixel Forest
- Date 2024
- Unveiled 2024
- Material Plastic shells, steel cables, LED-light, video and sound
- Details Site Spesific
- Availability Every day between 7 am to 11 pm
- Dimensions 212 m2
«We consist of a wonderful, chaotic, constantly changing biological mass.»
Photo: © Kristina A. Kvåle /Ekebergparken
Pipilotti Rist
(b. Grabs, Switzerland, 1962)
Pipilotti Rist, born Charlotte Elizabeth Rist, is a multimedia artist. She is most known for her explorative and provocative video installations, as well as her more recent light works. From 1982 to 1986, she studied commercial arts, illustration and photography at the Institute of Applied Arts in Vienna. She then studied audio-visual communication and video at the School of Design in Basel, tutored by professor René Pulfer (1986-88). In 1986 she made a name for herself with the video work I’m not the girl who misses much, where a woman stands in front of the camera, alone, with a simple white background. The woman is captured out of focus. She dances and jumps as she repeatedly sings the title of the work. Her voice is warped to a high pitch and speed, creating a manic effect, which suddenly changes to a dark, sardonic ambience. Her early video installations were classic video works, shown on TV-monitors. With Sip My Ocean (1996), Rist departed from the restrictions of the monitors. In this work, she projected a kaleidoscopic film over two walls meeting in a corner. By utilizing the wall as a canvas where two standalone films met, Rist expanded the exhibition format of the video as art media. The video became part of a spatial and all-encompassing experience. Rist’s work has been exhibited across the globe, and she has received several awards for her extensive work with colour, sound and video. Such as the prestigious Sikkens Prize (2024), the Premio 2000 award (1997) for her achievements at the Venice Biennale, the Joan Miró Prize (2009), the Harper’s Bazaar China Art Price (2012), the Zurich Festival Prize (2013) and the Prix Meret Oppenheim (2014).
Nordic Pixel Forest is an all-encompassing video- and sound installation situated in the middle of the Ekeberg forest, above the park’s water pond. It consists of 3600 eightfolded pixels / LED-points, displayed through artificial shells hung from 400 steel wires that come down from a net mounted in the tree crowns - 7 meters above the ground. Each singular LED-point pojects a part of a video image in constant motion accompanied by music.
Weaving their way through the forest of strands, colours, light and sound, the viewers are inserted into the video itself as it is being displayed. The viewer is allowed to step inside of the fragmented pictorial landscape and merge with it. Her first time trying on virtual reality goggles inspired Rist in this work. Rist describes it as being an incredible sensory experience, yet at the same time an intensely lonely one. Through the Pixel Forest installations, the artist seeks to extinguish this sense of loneliness and isolation, by creating a shared digital space that the viewers can inhabit together. As the artist herself puts it, she wanted to explode the television screen and make it three-dimensional, allowing the viewer to enter it and take part in the digital landscape as it unfolds.
The very first Pixel Forest installation was displayed in Kunsthaus Zürich in 2016, and later that year, at the New Museum in New York. With this work, she made use of the whole gallery space, installing shells in the ceiling, lighting up dark rooms. Since then, the artist has made several editions of the installation, for galleries and museums world-wide. In Nordic Pixel Forest, Pipilotti Rist takes this merging of the physical world and the digital world one step further. By leaving the controlled environment of a gallery room and entering the wild nature of the outdoor, Pipilotti Rist has created an installation that challenges our perception and understanding of what video can be. Through the Nordic Pixel Forest, she has created an installation that not only ignites a dialogue with our physical senses; but also enters a dialogue with the natural world surrounding it, and all the uncontrollable elements that entails. From insects, birds, wildlife, the forest ground and the trees - to the daily changes in light, as well as the changing seasons. This dialogue is further enhanced through the sounds of the installation, which consists of a combination of white natural noise, vocals, synthesizers, flutes and piano. As such the sound underlines this visual sensory experience and further ensures to mark the space of the installation as a place of contemplation and exploration.
Five years in the making, the artwork was finally unveiled in Ekebergparken on September 12th, 2024. Nordic Pixel Forest is the second artwork by the artist to be made for Ekebergparken. The first artwork, Nordic Hiplights, was unveiled in the autumn of 2022.
Project lead and engineering by Kaori Kuwabara
Sound collaboration Roland Widmer (synthesizers, sound design, record- & mixing), Seraphin Basedau (piano), Alex Boëthius (Monochord), Nike Dreyer (vocals & flute)
The artist further thanks for splendid collaborations: Kaori Kuwabara (lighting design, project lead), Nike Dreyer (management & more), Danielle Küchler-Flores (head of video), David Lang, Remo Weber (installation); Dorothea Drayer, Fabian Graber (Jakob Rope System); Glen Reed (arborist); Sarah Reece, Michael Müller, Thomas Schindler (Cristallux); Erhard Lehman, Peter Frings, Solveig Busler (Schnick Schnack Systems); Neil Wenman, Anna Caruso, James Koch (Hauser & Wirth); Magnus Borgen, Stian Østvik (electrical installation); Tangen & Co (fake stone), Robin Støckert (Soundscape Studios), Trym Lauritzen (CEO, Ekebergparken), Jørn Hagen (Maintenance and install, Ekebergparken), Kristina Aurore Kvåle (Mediation, Ekebergparken), Ina Johannesen Dibley (Curator-at-large, Ekebergparken), Christian Ringnes (Initiator and Board Chairman Ekebergparken)
Guided tours
Experience Nordic Pixel Forest and many of the other artworks in the collection with our art mediators. We offer guided tours for private groups all year around.