Film | Bart Hess Plays Cupid with Erotic Subversion on NOWNESS

Lovefest: Heart to Mouth on Nowness.com.

NOWNESS engages in another Lovefest moment, presenting “an erotic subversion of the Ultimate Amorous Icon” from artist Bart Hess. See lots more erotic subversion on website. 

Sheath your arrows: the voluptuous red heart, international symbol of love, is reimagined in this a visceral new short by genre-defying Dutch artist Bart Hess. With echoes of high-tech fetish fashion and Jeff Koons’ contemporary pop art classic “Hanging Heart,” Hess’ latest video stages a Sapphic encounter from within crimson latex balloons. “I want to create a tension between the body and material—almost as though they become one,” says the multidisciplinary creative, whose work at the edge of sensation has included collaborations with Nick Knight and Lucy McRae, a neon fantasy for Tod’s and a head-to-toe slime outfit for the artwork to Lady Gaga’s last album Born This Way. Here Hess turns to fringe science, confessing a fascination with the mysterious phenomenon of autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR). “It’s a physical sensation that most people describe as a tingling in the head or a ‘brain orgasm’ that can be caused by all kinds of sounds,” he explains of the intense experience, which, if you believe its proponents, can be provoked by online uploads of mundane tasks. “One video that definitely triggers something with me is of a woman playing with a balloon. Together with an amazing team I translated the idea into my own short.” 

Read on for Interview at NOWNESS.