Kiss Me

Ief Spincemaille, 2020

Concept: Ief Spincemaille
Photography: Veerle Scheppers and Ief Spincemaille
Commissioned by STUK, Artefact: Alone Together

Previously
2020 - Artefact, STUK Leuven (Belgium)

You hold a little mirror on your nose, like glasses, while kissing someone. You look into your own eyes, but kiss someone else’s lips.

Despite the world is connected with each other along a network of fiberglass, we seem to be more than ever alone together. “Kiss Me” brings these two opposing forces in our society together in one object: a longing for connectedness and an unbridled narcissism. And this by reinventing an age-old instrument: the mirror. Although a mirror focuses all the attention on yourself, the work “Kiss Me” leaves an opening to the other. Literally. At the bottom there is a notch that allows you to be in intimate physical contact with the other. The reflection is complemented by something real. But because the other person’s gaze remains hidden, the other person’s real body is fully instrumentalized. “Kiss Me” not only brings you closer to yourself, but at the same time pushes the other person further away.

In a digital realm, we remain dependent on the other person’s clicks for our ‘likes’. But all attention remains enclosed in an abstract world of Bits and Bites. Where do we find attention for each other in the real world? Doesn’t this digital network bring us further away from each other? Are we not alone together more than ever?

Kissing yourself on someone else’s lips is an alienating and complex experience, which in all its peculiarity tells us something about the world in which we find ourselves. More than a mirror to yourself, “Kiss Me” translates our digital understanding into a real experience of a kiss that isn’t there after all. It’s a mirror for our socio-political situation.

“Kiss Me” is a phenomenological investigation of our social and digital reality through an intimate performance. “Kiss me” tries to push the boundaries of what is permissible, in an interactive work of art. What is more intimate than asking your audience to kiss each other? At the same time, in this performance we may never have been so far away from each other.

“Kiss Me” is a continuation of a series of viewing instruments that Spincemaille has been developing since 2009. They deal with perception, image/reality, the digital realm, narcissism and media.