Your Palm is My Universe is rich in symbolism related to hands, skin, and the sense of touch. Besides showing their palms in gestures of openness, the multiple hands in the piece’s video elements twist and extend, seemingly attempting to reach beyond their screens and touch viewers. The suspended textiles allow some rays of light to pass through and reflect others, paralleling how skin serves as both a permeable membrane and protective barrier. There is no single definitive way to experience this work. The piece is interactive in an analogue sense: Viewers may lift up the fabric “skins” draped throughout the space, deforming these screens and altering the appearance of the video, or stick their heads through holes in cut in the textiles, gaining new perspectives. Visitors are encouraged to touch the art and appreciate the tactile sensations offered by its screens and carpets. Thanks to the scale of the project, they may actually touch individual projected pixels, subverting the idea of the “touch screen.”

With an area of over 2'000 m2, Your Palm is My Universe moves seamlessly between interior and exterior worlds: though the installation is intended in part to give viewers the impression of being inside a massive body, its video component repeatedly features shots of landscapes. Cameras slowly pan over fields dotted with trees, mountains visible in the background with blue skies above them. The concept of this work was first conceived for Rist's solo exhibition at the UCCA Beijing, and is a concept that can be architecturally integrated in most dark and spacious architectures. It offers an innovative integration of digital technology, video art, and large scale architecture. The scenes in the art work may seem to be bucolic, embodying a return to a more natural way of living. However, many of the landscapes shown are the product of industrial agriculture, as evidenced by the fields’ tidy rows and the tractors driving through them. At other points in the video, extreme close-ups transform stalks of flowers into entire trees, and vegetables like cauliflower and lettuce into rocky terrain and riverine systems, respectively. The artist presents humans and landscapes existing within a complex symbiotic system, each capable of impacting the other. Blown up through projection, the palm lines visible in the video resemble borders or topographical details, emphasizing connections between bodies and landscapes, microcosms and macrocosms.

None

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/1125508732

https://ucca.org.cn/en/exhibition/pipilotti-rist/

Details

Building or project owner : UCCA Beijing

Architecture : built in the 1950s, Dessau Design Institute, renovated by OMA in 2019

Project artist/ concept/ design/ planning : Pipilotti Rist, KLAUD.studio, Team Atelier Rist

Structural engineering : KLAUD.studio

Descriptions

Facade type and geometry (structure) : This work consists of an architectural integration, for which a large fabric structure is set inside a spacious building. The grey fabrics which fall freely and flow organically, are projected on by projectors mounted on top on the ceiling. The video material projected on is by multimedia artist, Pipilotti Rist, and consists of different depictions of hands, legs, nature and landscape perspectives.

Kind of light creation : Video projections

Resolution and transmitting behaviour : 4 times 4K

Urban situation : Former industrial hall, repurposed as a collective living room for the Center of Contemporary Art, UCCA Beijing

Participatory architecture & urban interaction

Mediacredits

© Pipilotti Rist

© Pipilotti Rist

© Courtesy of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art

© Courtesy of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art

© Courtesy of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art

© Courtesy of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art

© Courtesy UCCA Center for Contemporary Art Beijing