Soft Kiss Club
Soft Kiss Club - the name given to a series of fleeting encounters that constituted the public program of Kem School 2023, surrounding and informing it. The guests invited by us to teach workshops at Kem School conducted public sharings of their artistic practices through formats such as lectures, performances, film screenings and open rehearsals for choreographic processes.
Their diverse artistic activities were situated within queer-feminist, anti-fascist and emancipatory practices, at the crossroads between art and activism, poetry and social engagement. As a temporary body of work, they searched for a new grammar that encompasses intersectional narrations and allows one the possibility of imagining alternative new worlds.
The guests of Soft Kiss Club were:
★ Liz Rosenfeld
★ Agnieszka Polska
★ Marga Alferião
★ Maria F. Scaroni w/ Kem School 2023 participants
Soft Kiss Club took place as an addition to Kem School 2023 - a program which usually occurs during the summer months in Warsaw and brings together a group of participants selected through a spring-time open call.
These encounters - like a soft kiss, warm greeting or tender gesture, enticed us to mingle <3
This Should Happen Here More Often
All My (w)Holes and All My Folds of Cruising
Soft Kiss Club with Liz Rosenfeld
Liz Rosenfeld (they/them) has been collaborating with ideas of desire, flesh and body as material, and how space and times are queered through their interdisciplinary artistic practice for over two decades. In this artist talk Liz shared video works, drawings, writing and performance excerpts, discussing how different economies and fabrics of queer desire have and continue to inspire their work and queer life. The title of this talk was taken from their commissioned essay for a special edition of the journal Third Text, devoted to cruising histories.
Soft Kiss Club with Maria F. Scaroni
& the class of Kem School 2023
This Soft Kiss Club was the result of an intense process conducted by Maria F. Scaroni with the Kem School participants, that culminated with the development of a body of language and a language of bodies, that was re-staged and re-rehearsed during an open rehearsal in TR Warszawa.
Departing from her own practice of the influencer dance, Maria F. Scaroni led the Kem School participants through a 4-day process that harnessed love, grief and tribute as affects carrying performative and healing potentialities. By introducing practices concerning consent developed by queer organisations in San Francisco, exercises in anarchitecture and “fake healing” Maria encouraged them to establish connections between body and affect, and situate the two within the context of surrounding space and social architecture.
During Soft Kiss Club - a 45-minute time period, performers spread all throughout the theater, fragmenting viewers’ attention, and gave love to the space, wrote on the walls, playfully collaborated to test out new configurations of movement and being together and read out fragments of Bell Hooks’ works. You just had to be there!
Neverending Story
Lecture by Agnieszka Polska for Soft Kiss Club
During the third meeting of the Soft Kiss Club, Agnieszka Polska, a visual artist and film director, presented a fascinating reflection on the significance of abstract thinking cultivated by artists in the face of social, political, and economic crises.
How to nurture the skill of abstract thinking? How to develop the art of storytelling as a remedy against the engulfing void of Nothingness?
In her presentation, Agnieszka focused on perceiving the object of art as a unit participating in an affective circuit. Given that the influence of cultural objects/ artefacts on both the audience and social structures is a fundamental aspect of this phenomenon, they can be regarded as signals that either regulate or disrupt a recursive social system. Objects of art, understood in this way, becomes a distinctive token of affective processes on a planetary scale.
According to Agnieszka, the art of storytelling plays a crucial role in regulating the flow of emotions in information-exchanging societies. The way stories are told and interpreted shapes affective social dynamics, influencing planetary structures.
Lounge
Soft Kiss Club with Marga Alfeirão
For the last installment of Soft Kiss Club, we invited Marga Alfeirão for a oublic sharing of her piece Lounge at TR Warszawa.
The word Lounge is both a verb and a noun: an action of sitting or lying in a relaxed way or a public room where people may relax. This dual nature of resting is at the heart of this duet for two female-identifying bodies. Together they move through states of active and passive rest, using each other’s presence to go deeper into themselves and the vibe. Permeating the piece is the notion of the invisible lap dance, consisting of small, nearly imperceptible dances that use the gaze to blur the borders between the giver and receiver. By relying on erotics and building togetherness, Lounge taps into the comfort of rest as an active claim of womanhood.
After the performance, Stefa Gosiewsk conducted a public talk with the artists
Soft Kiss Club would not be able to happen without the generous support of our partners. Thank you to everyone involved <3
Goethe Institut Warsaw is a partner of the project
TR Warszawa is a partner of the project
The project is co-financed by the City of Warsaw