Kaucyila Brooke

Through manipulated film clips, the hilarious commentary of Theory Woman and interviews with the Lesbian on the Street, this marvelous videotape explores the lesbian subtext of classical films—the dry kisses of the tape’s title. Hollywood movies are re-edited to find the truth behind the relationships between the heroine and the “other woman.” Dykella and Dykenna chew over lesbian vampire stereotypes. And gossip columnist Lady Manilla Lively gives the inside scoop on lesbians in today’s Hollywood. DRY KISSES ONLY tells a story at once obvious and long-overdue, affirming the validity of lesbian readings of popular culture and the tenuous truths of gossip.

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In 2004-2005 as a recipient of the City Of Los Angeles Fellowship, I began the research for the Los Angeles Edition [of "The Boy Mechanic"]. The vast geography and dense web of highways in Los Angeles demanded a different approach to both the research and the resulting exhibition. In 2005 COLA exhibited two large scale framed color photographs, a chalk board wall sized drawing of a map of Los Angeles annotated with bar site snapshots and anecdotal text, and a ten minute video loop of drive-by footage of the located bar sites.

The Boy Mechanic was commissioned in 1996 by the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego for the exhibition “Re: Public; Listening to San Diego." For this initial phase of the project I conducted 30 hours of videotaped interviews with San Diego lesbian bar patrons who took me to current and former sites of the bars in that town. The result was a 30-minute video about the history of lesbian bars in San Diego.