Wednesday, January 23, 2002
Dear Nayland,
I am writing this text to tell you how much it meant to me to make this video together.
I am 55 years old, you are 31. In a way, a very simplistic way, we mirror each other: big beards, tattooed, gay, visual artists. Our practices have mirrored each other too: an eclectic mix of media and methods, from sculpture and installation to performance and video, and an ongoing awareness of political, social and sexual issues. I came to this collaboration as I feel an older gay man must in coming to a younger, as a willing mirror and as an acknowledgement of the other man's essential being. As gay men, we have too little acknowledgement in this world. We must bear witness for each other, and we do.
"The Kiss" is a universal theme: the kiss of life, and the kiss of death.
We are each all too practiced at being "the other". I think we are both "survivors" although we have not talked about surviving. We talked about our childhood; about race, gender, sexual preference; about food, intimacy and trust. We talked about the process of making this video.
The video is almost obsessively symmetrical. I apply brown, then white, to you (Betty Crocker canned frosting, but that's another story); you apply white, then brown, to me. We kiss: brown on white, then white on brown. The symmetrics of the system were important to us both, and I think we solved them.
The performance of the kiss itself: this had to be an act of total intimacy and total trust, because it functioned as the sealing point of the piece ("sealed with a kiss"); and because it had to function outside of our personal relationships. We kissed with our hands at our sides, a most unnatural position, rather than clasping each other, as might be expected. And yet this kiss was tender and giving: I experienced it as I experienced the entire project, slightly distanced, and yet intimate; I could call it a reflective kiss.
I suppose that this piece is about a balance of power. Throughout the entire piece, I let you take the lead. I considered it appropriate in my position as the older man. I wanted to embed myself in your process, rather than impose my process on you. I hope I was successful in that. And I think that approach is reflected in the symmetry of power that the video relates: it is the story of our relationship, or what our relationship becomes through the making of this work.
As I write this, I pause to consider if there is anything else that I want to say: I want to thank you. I want to thank you for the trust you placed in me and I hope I returned that trust in kind. We seemed to proceed in a perfect unison, such a rare experience in collaboration, and I thank you for that, too. Finally, I thank you for the essential experience of loving trust and intimacy, even tenderness, that suffused the entire experience, and which I find so central to how I want to live my life and art today.
Sincerely Yours,
AA Bronson