We facilitated Extreme Kissing; The Pleasures, Politics and Art of the Kiss, a four hour workshop, as part of the International Workshop Festival in London. Click Here to see the video of the workshop. Click Here to view the workshop hand-out.

This is a new version of our Hairotica installation, (see Red Year) featuring photos taken by David Steinberg. It is the documentation of a love making ritual where we shaved each other’s heads and made love to mark the beginning of Annie’s chemotherapy.

We were gifted a pair of beautiful lovers’ dice. One die instructed, “kiss, lick, touch, tickle, scratch…” and the other instructed “neck, thighs, lips, buttocks, belly...” We placed the lovers’ dice on top of a beautiful map of the world, and invited art patrons to feel free to roll the dice. Their only other instruction was to ‘make love not war.’ A large-scale projection of the dice and map appeared on the wall across the space so that everyone could see what the dice said. People could follow the instructions if so desired.

We held a séance in order to commune with the spirit of Marcel Duchamp. We asked him some questions, and exchanged erotic energy with him. Dutch artist, European chairman of Fluxus, and Annie’s ex-boyfriend Willem De Ridder, was our perfect medium. The public was invited, and about 80 people participated. The séance took place in Bourges, France at Transpalette, and was produced by Emmetrop.

First we sat in a circle holding hands around the bed where William laid, and then we did an invocation. We waited for a sign. When Kabul, a bulldog puppy started snoring loudly, we knew Marcel was in the room. Anyone that wanted to could ask a question, and Willem channeled the answers. At a certain point, the spirit of Andy Warhol showed up too and tickled Marcel. We then had a wonderful group erotic energy exchange with Marcel’s spirit, which brought the séance to a climax, and together we all basked in the afterglow for quite some time. The séance ended with three deep breaths and three claps. Then everyone took refreshments and mingled.

Inspired by Marcel Duchamps’s mysterious Étant Donnés, we designed and fabricated a beautiful door with a peep hole. Looking through the hole, viewers saw a video image of two naked full-figured women. We were laying in the grass by a flowing river, with our legs wide open, holding a lantern with a lit candle. French author and filmmaker Virginie Despuentes did the camera work. We made a second version of the piece installed at Femina Potens gallery.

We appropriated our vibrator as a ready-made art object, signing it “R. Muff,” a lesbian variation of Marcel Duchamp’s R. Mutt urinal. The vibrator hung down from an extension cord three stories high, and was turned on to high speed. People in the gallery were welcome to handle the vibrator, which heated up and glowed red in the dark gallery space. We did another version at Femina Potens gallery, placing one of our personal R. Muff Hitachi Magic Wand vibrators on an altar we made to honor our delightful lover and inspiration, Marcel Duchamp.

When we first entered the exhibition space, Transpalete, in Bourges, France, we fell in love with the most beautiful spiral staircase running up the center of the building. Within minutes we stripped naked, filmed each other, and ourselves while descending the staircase. We also recorded the sound of our dainty footsteps echoing throughout the building. The final product was projected on two big white perpendicular walls across from the staircase.

As we had not appeared nude in public since gaining some extra pounds, it would take some courage to show our new bigger bodies. We were in the Yellow Year, the Year of Courage, and Year of the Belly. So there was no doubt that we had to do it. Sometimes we love our big bellies, sometimes we don’t. But when we do performance art, we always love our bellies exactly as they are.

We also made a large print on canvas from a still of the performance/video, and wrote on it “We Made Love With Marcel Duchamp.” (Edition of 3) We later presented the Big Nudes Decending A Staircase on a 43” wide screen TV, which at our Femina Potens exhibit, was the piece de resistance.

2007 was the year of the belly chakra so we had bellies on our brains. One day, while sitting in our kitchen sipping tea with our friend, award-winning poet Camille Norton, we decided to draw each other’s bellies. Annie drew Beth’s belly, then Beth drew Annie’s belly, and Camille embellished them with lovely spontaneous poetry. One of our favorite poems is Lifting Belly by Gertrude Stein, so we titled them Lifting Belly Drawings. Love thy belly, we say!

2007 was the year of the belly chakra. So true to form, we grew our bellies bigger, softer, rounder. To document and celebrate this great achievement we rubbed each other’s bellies with ink and pressed them on to Arches 400 pound, 23” x 30” water color paper, like human printing presses. Then we embellished the prints with inky text and drawings. Our big belly prints hung in Femina Potens Gallery window right on San Francisco’s major boulevard, Market Street for a month. Day and night people could enjoy them. A sign read, “We are two queer women artists in love, growing old together. Our bellies are growing old too. Sometimes we love our big bellies, and sometimes we don’t. But we always love our belly prints.” More photos coming soon.

A delightful and dedicated group of folks with an art organization called Emmetrop invited us for a ten-day residency in Bourges, France. We filled Transpalette, their three story exhibition space, with our artwork. This work included photographs, collages, sculptures, video projections and performances. Beatrice Preciado, Europe’s hot, smart curator and queer studies academic, curated the show. We called our show Faire l’amour avec Marcel D., (We Made Love with Marcel D.) because we love the work of Marcel Duchamp and wanted to get to know him more intimately. Here is an overview of what we did while there. Click on other links for more details about the various works.