Centre

Belen: I feel like there are many dualities portrayed in the film: from Bliss’s gender expression, which exists in a space of ambiguity, to her costume and performance, which seem to bridge the space between human and non-human… There is also the song, since she sings about the duality of the desire to be “untouchable” and the immediate failure of that, which stems from being a person in the world, which is to say, we can’t escape being touched by others. This desire to flee the inevitability of touch was partially what made me uncomfortable; touch is destructive and transformative and terrifying and beautiful, and that’s kind of what’s really special about being a human, is the inescapability of fracture through contact.  

Inès: This is so interesting because I recently read that Tsang connected with boychild’s performance practice because she is able to transfer human emotions and feelings by embodying them. [1]

Belen: Exactly! Basco’s ability to convey so much affect and knowledge through her movements is beyond impressive. In her performance of Bliss, specifically when the character is on stage, the friction between “untouchability” and the impossibility of that, was felt in the motion of their body. Their performance was full of fractures; reading their facial expression, you can see them oscillate from super-star fluid delivery to a kind of suffering, or pleading. As they sing “contact, contact,” it kind of feels like a cry for help, like a human turned cyborg that actually remains human, begging for something else, something different, a life that is not drowned by hyper-visibility and continuous surveillance.

Inès: Precisely! What you just expressed feels like more than duality. Tsang has been exploring what she calls the “in-betweenness,” in her work. That is, “a state in which people and ideas cannot be described in binary terms.” [2] It’s exactly what we are seeing. The body, the mind, and the fantasy all collapse, conjunct, transform, and transcend into each other.

Belen: Yes! Also, knowing that both Tsang and Basco work closely with the theorist Fred Moten, I can’t help but think about a word that he coined with his collaborator Stefano Harney: “hapticality.” In their own words, hapticality is “the capacity to feel through others, for others to feel through you, for you to feel them feeling you.” [3] This feeling is what ties us to one another; it blurs boundaries and really illuminates, as you said, the body/mind/fantasy’s capacity to go beyond any kind of duality. Bliss’s plea to be untouchable is made impossible through their haptic disposition; it kind of feels like, through feeling the audience, the screens being pointed at them, the lights, the surveillance, Bliss collapses on stage due to this exchange of feeling, the porousness of being in the world, and the inevitability of being touched. 

Inès: Yes, beautifully put! There’s one last thing I have to say about Basco’s performance that really caught my attention. In the first part of the film, there is a scene where Bliss is covered in white powder as she bends and contorts her body in ways that make me think of Butoh dance performances. [4] Butoh is a dance-theatre art form that was created by two Japanese choreographers (Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno) after World War II. The dance practice itself is hard to define, which is also part of the beauty of it, because it is open to a myriad of interpretations. From my perspective, because of the way Butoh dancers are contorting their bodies and faces, it feels like an analogy for suffering, distress, or even the transition to death, which brings into consideration the in-betweenness of spirituality—how life and death are always in dialogue and in relation. Bliss is oscillating in a multitude of different realms.

Belen: Yes, and her performance is so indicative of that oscillation; as she glitches, she disintegrates, and the film ends. That rupture leaves the viewer in the space of the unknown. Also, her movements kind of signify that interplay between life and death: from the suffering to the delivery, from the human to the glittery, Bliss seems to constantly be on the precipice of breaking down or of vanishing into the digital abyss, into a heightened commodification that leaves no space for their humanity.

I think The Looks really highlights the importance of movement for me. As a person that’s really drawn to language, it is fascinating to feel and understand so much from a film that is partially structured by language, but mostly centered on movement. I was touched by the beauty of translation: Tsang’s ability to capture performance and offer the viewer an experience that is so palpable and tangible, is truly incredible. Also, I guess it kind of fed the flames of fear with regards to surveillance and, upon reflection, heightened my own sense of discomfort with technology. I’m trying to shift my relationship with it, because it’s irreversible and I think there’s a lot of generative possibilities tied to technological growth; this excerpt of Bliss’s narrative didn’t necessarily point that out for me, however the film is a testament to those possibilities. 

Inès: I was touched by the way Tsang and Basco were able to combine their artistic practices to transfer emotions through a sci-fi tinged realm. The Looks led me to understand how storytelling can take many forms, and how it is truly generative. There is a lot of power in being able to create an imaginary world that helps us process our current reality. I felt highly inspired by the power embodied by Basco in her performance and Tsang’s transformative figments of imagination.