The Window-Washer and the DJ

Please join The Musicology and Ethnomusicology Student Association as they host a lecture by our very own Dr. Isabelle Wallace on November 14, 2019 at 5pm in room 210 at the Hugh Hodgson school of Music.

The Window-Washer and the DJ: Reflections on Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s Le Baiser / The Kiss 

An analysis of a contemporary video installation by multi-media artist, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, this lecture considers Le Baiser/The Kiss (1999) with particular attention to the installation’s three characters: the window-washer, played by Manglano-Ovalle; the DJ, played by an androgynous actress hired for this purpose; and Mies van der Rohe’s famous Farnsworth House, whose west wall conjoins and divides the window washer and DJ. Also at issue is the video’s fractured soundtrack, which shifts between the ambient sounds of the Farnsworth Estate and an enigmatic instrumental score composed by sound artist Jeremy Boyle. Asking what’s at stake in the video’s disparate parts is the work of this paper, which finally reads Le Baiser as both a compressed history of media and a portrait of contemporary sociability.