Visual description
The video depicts two men sitting frontally at a table. The table cuts across their naked torsos at the waist. In front of each of them is a slice of cake. They take turns biting off a piece of their cake and passing it to each other by mouth.
a feeding kiss
The act of sharing food carries immediate associations with care, intimacy, and nourishment. By passing the cake mouth-to-mouth, the gesture merges feeding with erotic intimacy. Depending on the viewer’s perspective, the scene can appear tender and loving, but also uncomfortable or even disgusting. The work operates simultaneously on these two levels: eating from another person’s mouth is at the same time a kiss between two men.
Through this fusion, the scene acquires an almost obscene quality, not because of explicit sexuality itself, but because intimacy is pushed beyond socially sanctioned boundaries.
an embodied pact
The cake itself evokes pleasure, indulgence, sweetness, and celebration. When combined with repeated action, it transforms the already extraordinary gesture into something ceremonial, a form of choreography
At the same time, the repetition suggests reciprocity and mutual dependence. Neither figure remains purely active or passive; both give and receive in equal measure. The exchange becomes a form of vow — an embodied pact.
imagining queer ritual
In this sense, the work can be understood as imagining queer ritual outside institutional or oppressive religious languages. Rather than relying on fixed symbols of sanctity, I propose my own. Similarly to my explorations in How to Mourn a Faggot in a Faggot Way, the work is a continuation of the development of a new lexicon of spirituality and meaning that are fundamentally rooted in queerness.
inspirations
I want to stress that this is not a conceptual work, nor was it designed. It derives from lived experience.
One day, while eating a pineapple, I was about to have the last piece. Chike, my partner, came into the kitchen and expressed slight disappointment that there was none left. In response, with a piece already in my mouth and my teeth already clenching around it, I stopped myself from eating it. I passed it, lightly bitten, from my mouth to his.
Almost immediately, I was struck by the multiplicity of meanings held within that minor moment, and the knowledge it revealed to me. This work grows out of a reflection on this brief, intimate event.
Michał Rutz
Special thanks to Anna Leonova, the camera person, for helping make this video.