*Isolate.

Breath of sanitised teeth

Wash.

Latex fingertips caressing skin

Sanitise.

A mask framing your lustful gaze

Stay in.

Are you ready to play?*

We devised this uncanny live-streamed performance piece as a response to the first lockdown, which took place in London at the end of March 2020. We took the invitation to perform at Riposte x Online, one of the first queer club nights taking place online on Zoom, to explore the experience of isolation from a femme-kink perspective. Streamed directly from our living room, with the use of two cameras connected to the same platform, we performed a ritual of desire and intimacy triggered by the strange new world of a global pandemic in which “social distancing” and hyper-sanitisation would be the new “normal.” Our usual hyper-femme appearance was now equipped with masks and gloves, and the floor marked with arrows signalling a distance of 2 meters. We used the webcam as a mirror to fix our lipstick. On the other side, the world was watching us: Intimacy and exposure, desire and voyeurism. We entered the circle and surrendered to each other—kissing our painted face-masks, twisting our bodies and smudging red lipstick onto our skin, to end with a cathartic embrace.

A re-worked augmented version was then presented as part of the event @Disturbance at the Ugly Duck in London, in collaboration with producer Deen Atger, computational artist Robert Hall and with the drone sounds of Body Fool. “The Lovers MMXX (after Magritte)” developed into a multi-layered hybrid performance for a limited live audience and a simultaneous live-streamed broadcast. On that occasion, one mobile phone, three rotating cameras, and one fixed camera were set up in the performance space: their feed was then modified live by Hall, who manipulated the video to produce glitches, overlayers, and multiple screens. The resulting work was also projected back into the performance space, thus blurring the boundaries between digital and physical.