The Colour of Your Socks - A Year with Pipilotti Rist
Die Farbe Deiner Socken - Ein Jahr mit Pipilotti Rist

Interview with Michael Hegglin

Birgit Kempker: Why Pipilotti Rist? Why Michael Hegglin?
Michael Hegglin: When I saw Pipilotti’s Selbstlos im Lavabad for the first time, I knew that here was an artist who speaks to me. Later on, I saw I’m not the Girl who misses much and Ever is Over All—and there were these explosions all over again. (In my head? In my heart? Somewhere inside me.) And later on, when I got to know Pipilotti in the context of my work, my breath was taken away by so much courage, openness and coherency. From that point onward it was my desire to make a film about her. As for why she agreed to it, you’d have to ask her. In any case, however, one of the reasons was that she liked a book that I’d written together with my wife, Susanna Schwager, about Mexico, which I’d given her to read.

BK: What was the—unspoken?—secret?—mantra during that year with Piplotti?
MH: What is a mantra, anyway? Something you keep repeating to yourself silently, or something like that. "Dear God, make it so that…" I prayed little during that year. But each of the shooting days was a gift. One just couldn’t escape the positive spin on everything. Not: what’s going wrong? Who’s being stupid? But rather: how might we do it otherwise? And generally: we can do something. Let’s do it. Or something like that.

BK: Happiness and beauty—do they look different to you following this year?
MH: I don’t want to look sexy, says a woman who is very good-looking by all the usual standards. And indeed: she is never dressed in a sexy way, never shows any décolleté, doesn’t wear any tight pants or 'feminine' skirts. Beauty must come from within.

BK: Were there scenes, or was there even just one particular scene, that Piplotti didn’t like? If so, were there ones where she didn't like how her body came across?
MH: Pipilotti didn’t once ask us not to film something. She completely trusted both me and my cameraman, Peter Hammann. The only thing we deleted from the film was a shot in which someone, in passing, makes a statement about her feature film Pepperminta, a statement which made her feel completely misunderstood. That was maybe around ten seconds of a film that lasts 52 minutes, and which I spent a total of four and a half years working on. On the other hand, Pipilotti didn’t complain about a single shot in which she thought she might not look so good. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that she was pleased with herself. On the contrary, it was torture for her to have to watch herself for nearly an hour. But she was confident enough to stick to what she had promised me in her own handwriting at the very beginning: "I’m on board for this! I will have the opportunity to look at the final version with veto rights (of which I almost certainly won’t make any use)."

BK: Were there ever embarrassing or awkward moments? Were you ever embarrassed, or were others?
MH: Yes, there were. For example at our first meeting, on the top floor of a tall building in Guadalajara, Mexico which contained a gallery. I met with Pipilotti right before the exhibition’s opening. It was a difficult moment for me, because I wanted to convince Pipilotti—whom I hadn’t met personally up until then—to participate in the film. Pipilotti, probably wanting to break the ice, suggested that we google me—which she immediately set about doing in one of the gallery’s offices, with the lights of the Guadalajaran night going on one-by-one down below us. What she found there was of course rather meager: to this day, I don’t have my own website, and I don’t do much to push my virtual presence. Compared with her perhaps 120,000 entries, I felt like insignificance personified. Which Pipilotti immediately tried to gloss over in a rather actionist way.

BK: Which scene, whether actually shot or simply imagined, do you most regret not having in this film?
MH: There are dozens of them, but most of all perhaps the one in Venice. It was a banquet for 200 people at a venerable old palazzo, and gallery owner Iwan Wirth began to make a speech ("Dear Pipilotti …") and Pipilotti, overcome by embarrassment, hid under the table.

BK: What scene would you want to smuggle into the film, if you could?
MH: Pipilotti loves to lick her plate clean. We once spent an entire evening being incredibly pesky, because we really wanted to finally get that onto film. She didn’t do us the favor.

BK: Who would be your most favored documentary filmmaker for a documentary about yourself, as you are?
MH: I think there exists only one person who is less interested than Pipilotti in being the subject of a documentary film: me. If there were no way to avoid it: Thomas Riedelsheimer (Rivers and Tides).

BK: Back to the mantra question. By mantra I meant something more like a secret phrase that you might be able to invent, or even just approximate, after the fact.
MH: Mantra: She’ll do what she wants.

You can read the full-length version of the interview here soon.