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CULTURE

Selfie ban as Swiss artist proves runaway success in Sydney

An exhibition by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist at the prestigious Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia has proved so successful that the venue has had to impose a part-time selfie ban to keep crowds moving along.

Published: 27 February 2018 17:19 CET
Selfie ban as Swiss artist proves runaway success in Sydney
Swiss artist and director Pipilotti Rist at the photocall for "Pepperminta" at the Venice film festival in 2009. Photo: AFP

The ‘Sip my Ocean’ show by the Zurich-based artist who specialises in experimental video art and multimedia installations was so successful that opening hours for the exhibition were extended and late-night sessions were put on to cope with demand.

The Sydney museum was also forced for the first time ever to limit visitor numbers during peak times while the use of smartphones was even banned during certain times to ensure people moved through the exhibition spaces more quickly.

A glance at Instagram reveals the popularity of the Swiss women's retrospective on social media. Under the hashtag #pipilottirist there are more than 30,000 images taken by people at the exhibition.

And while final figures are not yet available, the museum estimates visitors numbers were 20 to 30 percent above usual levels at the museum durng the Rist show.

The runaway success of the exhibition by the Swiss artist has taken the Sydney museum by surprise.

In an interview with Swiss news agency SDA/ATS, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor acknowledged that selecting Pipilotti Rist for the MCA’s special summer exhibition had been a risk, given that she was all but unknown in Australia outside of the art community.

But it was clear from early on that the show was going to be a success.

Macgregor, who turned down the chance to head up the UK’s Tate museums in 2016 put the success of the Rist exhibition down to the role of social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter.

The museum director also noted that Rist, originally from Switzerland’s Rheintal, was able to express complex ideas in a fun and colourful way. The fact that visitors were part of the interactive show was also important, she said.

Lastly, Macgregor said the exhibition had attracted a lot of Asian visitors who were drawn by the chance to explore themes related to women and body image in a way they were not able to do in their home countries.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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