For the exhibition period, UCCA has curated a series of public programs that take the body as a point of departure, traversing the boundaries of moving image, music, and thought to invite audiences on an artistic journey of perception and expression. To highlight Pipilotti Rist’s early exploration of the female body, sensory experience, and the language of video, UCCA will screen a series of her iconic works spanning 1986 to 1995 on a loop every Friday and Sunday in the UCCA Auditorium, Beijing, beginning July 20, 2025.

For the exhibition’s opening, UCCA Curator Yan Fang and Nike Dreyer, Pipilotti Rist’s Studio Manager, will lead a special tour of the exhibition. The same day will also feature an experimental music performance by three acclaimed musicians—Surma, gogoj, and VAVABOND. Responding in resonance to Rist’s lush and introspective artistic world, the musicians will perform around a shared emotional and conceptual thread: “compression.” Inspired by the Beijing edition of the ongoing “The Innocent Collection” series of works, UCCA will also organize a hands-on workshop on August 16, inviting participants to create “instant diamonds” from reclaimed transparent plastic—discovering fleeting yet radiant moments from everyday life. 

A highlight of the public programs curated for this exhibition is the parallel conversation series “She, Universe: Women’s Position in Literature, Sociology, and Film Studies.” Extending the exhibition’s context into humanities and social sciences, this conversation series will critically examine and reflect on the cultural norms and orthodoxies imposed on women, how women raise their voices through literature. The final session returns to film studies, focusing on how generations of European women filmmakers have used the camera to document their explorations of bodily boundaries and the liberation of self.