Does kissing in public make a beautiful piece of art on par with Robin’s ‘Kiss’ or is it just repulsive? This is the question that artist Claire Blundell Jones began with for her latest piece of performance art.
Claire is a Leeds based performance artist, and just 3 years out of Wimbledon Art School she is making quite an impression on the performance art scene. Claire began making performance art through a desire to explore a more direct, and possibly confrontational, relationship between art and its audience. Themes of vulnerability, alienation, gender and the spilt between private and public rituals have been a broad preoccupation for Claire in her art. In the past, Claire has stood in Heathrow arrivals and asked strangers for hugs, and pulled an adult sized comfort blanket around London!
This latest piece, ‘Kissing’, is the first one that Claire has not been involved with directly. Claire gathered together six willing couples (one of whom were not a couple in real life) and positioned them around Leeds Met University with the instruction to kiss uninterruptedly for 10 minutes. I went down for The Hype to see what being involved with performance art was like.
On 24th November Leeds Met was filled with performance and instillation artists as the Perambulator Event took over the Met. Claire’s ‘Kissing’ piece was one of several performance artists positioned around the Met inviting audience members for ‘A Rich Tea Conversation’ or to come to a new understanding of the cosmopolitan beauty of Leeds. As the audience wandered between the different pieces they would stumble upon Claire’s six kissing couples. We were asked to be at assigned places at assigned times and kiss without stopping, irrespective of the reactions we provoked.
Our first kiss was in the middle of a long corridor. The six couples were clustered together requiring the audience to walk around or through the group. As we took up position and began kissing, a quiet reverence descended on the institutionalised corridor. The audience stopped, and watched, not speaking. Or rushed past with their heads down, embarrassed.
Our second kiss was in a lift that moved between floors, the doors opening on unsuspecting members of the public. Squashed in, there was little room left in lift and we were all curious to see if anyone would dare join us. As the doors opened, we were greeted with giggles and comments of ‘Not them again!’ The reverence had gone, as audience joined us in the lift giggling and making lured comments. ‘By the second kiss, I’d got used to it’, says Max, one of the kissers, ‘There was a bond between us and the rest of the couples. It was us and the non-kissers.’ And this was what I felt as the third kiss, outside the bar on the top floor of the Met, likewise attracted comments from the audience, aimed to try and distract us from our kissing!
The different reactions that our kissing provoked made me ask questions about our society. What does it say about how our society reacts to displays of affection? Were the audience’s giggles masking discomfort? And the lured comments, jealousy at someone else’s happiness with another person? Speaking to Claire after the performance, she talked about wanting to expand the performance, and to take the idea into public places. How the truly unsuspecting audience would react, rather than the manufactured environment of a voluntary audience at a performance art event. So, when you see couples kissing down at the station, in Morrisons or at a bus stop, why not think about how you express affection towards the people you love?
