Catherine Plaisance et Christian Barré

The Kisses of Resistance by Catherine Plaisance et Christian Barré.

"The proposed photographs and video are taken from an action executed in diverse public places. They have been chosen for their impersonal character . These places give off an aura of the alienation of the individual and the dilution of his uniqueness. They can be unusually big businesses, unnatural work places, or even cold and impersonal spaces.

We have chosen to use intimacy, authenticity, and the togetherness of our couple as a material for contamination, propaganda, and solicitation. These passionate kisses present themselves as a poetic axis for connection. They inject love and humanity into places bearing the traces of mercantile anonymity. Sometimes causing discomfort, sometimes a smile or a conversation, our kisses interfere with various contexts which are foreign to the intimate.

Pretending to be tourists or newlyweds, we ask a passer-by to take a picture of us kissing. The presence of a third party automatically makes this kiss an event. The three authors brought together as such, agree to create an improvised scene that makes this intimate act topple into the public domain. A shift in meaning that questions the types of proximities that we hold with each other. Through the involvement of an outsider, the act can continue as symbolic contamination and resistance to the dehumanization that progressively causes death."