Sonic Subjectivity: Blow Job & Kiss at Unsound

This weekend, the Unsound Music Festival launched in New York with musical accompaniment to screenings of two Warhol films, Kiss (1963) and Blow Job (1964) at the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center. Kiss (watch it here) is a study of sexuality, dominance, sensuality and gender. Through 3 minute and 20 second segments (the length of one 16mm roll of film) a pair of faces locks lips. As each segment begins, the image fades in as the kiss is already underway. At times, we feel that the kiss has been going on for hours, days even, as the lovers devour each others' faces with no self consciousness. However, some pairings appear to be newly introduced and their kiss is tentative and awkward.

The musicians, Max Loderbauer and Vladislav Delay, performed as narrators, assigning a value to each kissing pair. Early in the piece, their impact on the images was minimal and we were able to study the intricacies and permutations of lips coming together. Warhol's tricks with gender and sexuality are glorious in this piece; an early shirtless pair is revealed to be two men (instead of the repeated male/female coupling that had become expected.) Accompaniment in the first third of the piece was light, slow and dreamy. But mid-way, as an over-exposed shot revealed a black man and lighter skinned woman kissing, the musicians felt it appropriate to dive into deeper tones. None of the couples are female/female in Kiss, and only once is a woman is pictured "on top," controlling the pace and depth of a smooch. Sadly, here was another moment when the musicians felt a low, darkening tone was most appropriate.

The second performance by epic techno musician Carl Craig accompanied Blow Job a 35 minute medium close up of the face of a man receiving the film's title. As Craig began building beats and tones to work with the action on screen, he played with the humor of the moment - mimicking the fellator and interacting with the jerks and unheard moans of the receiver. I admit to thinking that I had unfortunately landed myself into the ultimate masculinist space: a Polish electronic music festival relaunched in New York, wherein most of the performers and panelists are men, opening with nothing less than a celebration of a hard cock. But Craig refused to allow the project to dwell simply within that space. Tones and tempos moved from external humor to interior pleasure. As each 3:20 segment of the film rolled by, the musical performance became entrancing and the bass-heavy thumping felt like the inside of my head and heart, rather than the tip of the film's subject's phallus. We watch his head tilt back and forward, losing site of his entire face at times, but movement on screen is minimal and the music moves us inside. 35 minutes later, after the moment of release was assumed, an intimacy between the film's subject and the audience resonated and a connection between audience, musician and filmmaker remained.