Kissing Appointments, Birmingham

Dear All,

Just to let you know, there are still slots available for Live Art Encounter "The Moment Before We Kiss (2008) in Birmingham this weekend.

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Saturday 24 May - Sunday 25 May / 11am – 8pm
A secret location / 15 minute appointments
Please book 0121 244 8080 / £3

“I have found men who didn’t know how to kiss.

I’ve always found time to teach them.” – Mae West

In ‘The Moment Before We Kiss’ Michael David Jones offers strangers the chance to savour with him the moment before the first kiss. The participant and artist will meet, make eye contact and move their lips together. Before their lips touch, they both must stop and hold this moment, the electric energy bound by the rules of the encounter.

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Further Info (for scaredy cats...)

The Moment Before We Kiss (2008) is a sensitive one to one that explores and builds upon the anticipation, potential and embarrassment of the first kiss. The piece explores the moment just before lips touch. The artist is open to appointments with participants over 18 years old of all genders and sexualities.

Previous showings/Feedback
“You and Your Work 4” 24th January 2008
The Cube Microplex, Bristol (Arts Council Funded Platform)

“A very brave piece of work which explores a fundamental human encounter (nearly every single person on this earth shares the first kiss experience). You conducted it very well, with sovereignty and sensitivity for your audience, not an easy task regarding your objective. I am glad that you did not document the encounters and passed them generously over to our and your memory.”
Birgit Binder, Co-Director ‘You and your Work’

“Some men around me were talking all evening about your performance and how close they came to your lips and how that felt. Even one guy who actually didn’t take part at all, talked all the time about how he would have reacted. They claimed your performance didn’t work for men, but actually I think it really did as these guys just couldn't stop talking about it, which is a really good sign.”
Sylvia Rimat, Co-Director ‘You and Your Work’

“I find kissing a fascinating subject - it’s a globally accepted phenomenon and more or less means the same wherever you may go. There’s also the idea (that may or may not be true) that prostitutes might sell their bodies but kissing is off-limits, showing the depth of meaning in the act.”
Terence McDermott, Gallery Director: Art Lounge (Birmingham Mailbox)

FIERCE http://www.myfiercefestival.co.uk/index.php?controller=event&mm_action=view&id=164

Artists Website: http://www.dogruff.net/

Kate Rusby at the Colston Hall

Kate Rusby
Colston Hall
25/04/08

Every year on my birthday my parents would take me to visit my Auntie Sue and Uncle Barry for birthday tea. Their bungalow was always warm and inviting; the plastic coal fire always roaring. Salad, pork pie, scotch egg; Battenberg. Sue had an impressively modern Tupperware device for washing lettuce; a dark brown circular tub containing a plastic mesh basket. The lettuce would be rinsed and placed into the device to be dried. The lid of the tub had a handle, which when turned would cause the lettuce to spin, its centrifugal force flinging the water into the bottom of the tub. The lettuce would then be placed into a large crystal serving dish and layered with eighths of tomato and freshly sliced cucumber. If we were lucky a spring onion was added to the mix.

Entering the Colston Hall this evening, birthday tea with my Auntie Sue was haptically evoked. I could practically taste the spring onions. Rusby’s audience had the combined scent of a thousand Avon Ladies; swathes of people old enough not to worry about wearing lenses rather than glasses fought to compete with each others overpowering scents. Estee Lauder, Joop and Poison battled to the death in the vast yet intimate space. Pearl earrings were the decoration du jour, trends unimportant, comfort placed at the forefront of outfit decisions.

Rusby was on comedic form, providing humorous interludes between songs in her Barnsley Patois. Stories of women’s prisons and ‘The Folk Police’ along with occasional asides from her band added much needed respite from the ‘rousing’ folk tunes her band trotted out competently. Rusby’s voice was soothing and lustrous as it poured from her body, pitch perfect yet sometimes teetering on the edges of twee. There were fleeting moments of magic, her words a susurrus across the hairs of my arms; she seemed completely engaged in the music. Stepping back from the microphone to pay attention to each instrument she slightly cocked her head, her fingers tapping out the rhythm whilst a slightly bizarre expression of deep concentration illuminated her face; which at times contorted oddly.

On a song that referenced spindles and bobbins and accompanied by Stylophone, I drifted away to a world of pleasant fluff, like waking up in a box of kittens. The majority of her songs washed over me in this way and my mind was free to wander where it may. Auntie Sue could not have even contemplated the horror that I was to turn out to be a homosexual. She has no idea even this day. Uncle Barry has a heart condition and the shock could cause him harm.

Jam and Jerusalem theme tune and Kinks Cover ‘The Village Green Preservation Society’ read less as a caring but slightly ironic acknowledgment of the nicer elements of English culture and rather more a call to arms for the suburban audience. There was nothing challenging about this evenings entertainment; wave after wave of pleasant folk ditty recalled better times, where knights rescued damsels and bone china was brought out on special occasions.

As the evening progressed the smell of competing perfume became the breathy smell of cheese and onion sandwich. How unfortunate that I was seated next to the chap who had consumed such smelly lunch. During the interval a disinterested looking husband brought out his newspaper and the gentleman in front carried on with his book. The Battenberg was always the highlight of my birthday tea. Rusby brought the salad and the Tupperware drainer. I might go as far as saying she had spring onion. However, she lacked the ever important Battenberg.

I came home feeling soothed yet hungry. Perhaps I should give Sue a call?

Fiction

Jeanette Winterson
Art Objects
Vintage, 1996
Page 59 - 60

"Are real people fictions? We mostly understand ourselves through an endless series of stories told to ourselves and others. The so-called facts of our individual wolds are highly coloured and arbitrary, facts that fit whatever fiction we have chosen to believe in. It is necessary to have a story, an alibi that gets us through the day, but what happens when the story becomes a scripture? When we can no longer recognise anything outside of our own reality? We have to be careful not to live in a state of constant self-censorship, where whatever conflicts with our world view is dismissed or diluted until it ceases to be a bother. Struggling against the limitations we place upon our minds is our own imaginative capacity, a recognition of an inner life often at odds with the external figurings we spend so much energy supporting. When we let ourselves respond to poetry, to music, to pictures, we are clearing a space where new stories can root, in effect we are clearing a space for new stories about ourselves."

Close to You (2008) at Worst Nightmare

A LINK to Arnolfini Worst Nightmare here

I will be part of this with work in progress 'Close To You (2008)'

Last years worst nightmare was one of Arnolfini's most vibrant live weekends I have ever seen. Do come!

Finding The Moment

Here is a LINK to an article about my work written for Artshub

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Finding The Moment
by Michael David Jones
Arts Hub
Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Michael David Jones is in the running to be part of Birmingham's FIERCE festival with The Moment Before We Kiss, where he offers strangers the chance to savour him, the very moment before their first kiss. He tells Arts Hub about his work and his practice as an artist.

It is early evening, snow is falling. I am running through the streets of London in just my underwear and a cardigan; the cold raises goose pimples on my skin as flushes of hot blood pump through my body and flood my cheeks. Exhausted, I desperately look for him and; thank god, see him leaving a bookshop. I try to explain, desperate not to lose him. He kisses me. It is the most passionate, deeply satisfying, earth-shaking kiss. Shocked to the core, I utter the words “Wait a minute? Nice boys don’t kiss like that” he envelopes me in his long black coat and looks deep into my eyes. His voice a low growl, he responds; “Oh yes they fucking do”.

Summer 2007, I began the process of applying for an MA Fine Art. Part of the application process was to consider the area of research and resulting work I would make during the course. I proposed to find out what it means to be ‘In the Moment’ with a focus on romance on the screen juxtaposed with my experience of romance; to explore small romantic gestures with complete strangers. I have found many moments along the way. I naïvely proclaimed that by the end of these explorations I would have a clearer idea of ‘Romance’, ‘The Moment‘, ‘Lust’ and ‘Love’. I wanted to know; can the moment be found with a stranger?

Live Art offers me space to explore moments of shared experience in a multitude of surprising ways. I meet people from all walks of life and can never know how an audience member will engage with me or my work. This means that every experience is as fresh for me as it is for them. I have to be open to all possibilities; which takes a certain kind of foolish bravery. This is both terrifying and electrifying.

In my latest work The Moment Before We Kiss (2008) I offer strangers the chance to savour with me the moment before the first kiss. In five-minute appointments, I meet with participants one-on-one; we introduce ourselves and discuss the moment. The culmination of this is the moment itself; we make eye contact and move our lips together to kiss. Before our lips touch, we both must stop and hold this moment, charged and full of potential.

Speaking on Channel Four documentary Artshock in 2006, artist Kira O’Reilly talks of the ‘real conversations’ that occur when participants in her work are considering cutting her skin. This type of spontaneous, real conversation is pivotal in building trust and intimacy in my work; there is something unpredictable and exciting about the meeting of minds that may occur. I try to create work that can be read bodily; physically, musically; guttural, instinctive. Building the trust required to find these intimate moments is an important part of the process.

Romance transcends the ideologies of ‘high’ culture. Romantic acts are as prevalent in classic literature as in Hollywood Cinema. Live Art Platform You and Your Work described my piece The Moment Before We Kiss (2008) as exploring “a fundamental human encounter (nearly every single person on this earth shares the first kiss experience)” The body is almost always written with experience; I see potential in the kiss. An instantaneous, bodily response; how can such a simple act be so monumental? Talking about the proposal for the piece at FIERCE, Terence McDermott from Birmingham’s art lounge speaks of kissing as “a globally accepted phenomenon (that) more or less means the same wherever you may go. There’s also the idea (that may or may not be true) that prostitutes might sell their bodies but kissing is off-limits, showing the depth of meaning in the act.”

In initiating this project I was unprepared for the extent of this depth, or how much a part of my everyday life the research would become. I am buzzing with possibilities, thoughts and ideas. Following my instincts is as much a part of the process as exploring theory. I want to know more about the moment and its connections with live art and performance; who is performing? I want to know about trust, intimacy and theatricality. I want to know about those pesky elephants; gender, sexuality.

I propose a toast; to finding the answers, to the beauty of finding the moment; to the meeting of minds and to fleeting moments of Romance. I raise my glass.


Editor's note: Jones is currently in the running to be part of Birmingham's FIERCE festival with The Moment Before We Kiss (2008) and is currently developing new work with Arnolfini Gallery Bristol. His work in progress Close To You (2008) will be shown as part of platform event ‘I am still your worst nightmare’ on April 26th/27th.

http://www.dogruff.net
http://myfiercefestival.co.uk

FIERCE #1

Today Terence McDermott, Gallery Director at Art Lounge in Birmingham's Mailbox mentioned my work as his favourite in the unconventional space category at FIERCE.

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Source

And what was your choice for an ‘unconventional’ location?

The Moment Before We Kiss. I find kissing a fascinating subject - it’s a globally accepted phenomenon and more or less means the same wherever you may go. There’s also the idea (that may or may not be true) that prostitutes might sell their bodies but kissing is off-limits, showing the depth of meaning in the act.

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I never thought there would be a discussion about prostitution in relation to my work!

Strange world.

Only a few days left to go before the final acts are decided; if you like the sound of my Kissing piece, please vote for me at

http://myfiercefestival.co.uk/vote-now/

Mike

Culture

I have always been waist deep in mainstream culture. I freely admit to being a Buffy fan. I like Skins. I cried a bit at Bridget Jones's Diary and my Jurassic Park VHS is worn out. I watch the Eastenders Christmas special every year, even though I have no idea who any of the characters are. I have eaten (bread) at McDonalds (circus) and I firmly believe Mean Girls to be a significant cultural document.

The internet has an influence on the way in which I receive culture and in turn influenced the interests that inform my work. The blurring of reality and fiction is more prevalent than ever before. Blair Witch has been overwritten by Cloverfield, a Hollyoaks ‘Character’ will soon be playing Maria in the West End. Pawel Althamer’s Film (2000) recreates a mock advert for a mock film as an event in itself; simultaneously exposing both the boundaries of reality and the cult of celebrity. I am interested in the borders where fiction becomes reality; where the two begin to merge.

Bordieu speaks of Cultural Capital; an embodied state, an objectified state and an institutionalized state. He speaks of knowledge; skill; education; any advantages a person has which give them a higher status in society. The constructs of culture assume high culture to be consuming; time consuming, thought consuming and money consuming. I propose otherwise. ’Low Culture’ and its raw, instantaneous energy is inspiring and informative. I proudly proclaim my status as a lover of the cult of mainstream and its influence of my work.