Electrosexual has us accustomed to biting and daring aesthetic exercises, the new music video is no exception. LÈVRES ROSES, or the pink lips, has direction, voice, lyrics and script by Nicky Miller , in addition to the participation of Ixa on screen. The premise is given by the authors and can be read on Youtube: “on his rounds of the cemetery, a night watchman stumbles upon a pair of dead bodies, blindfolded and locked in a kiss”. Deeper there is still a message, the “ode dedicated to trans-lovers” and an “invitation to self-liberation”. The work, which is being shown at queer film festivals as a short film, deserves our attention. What, then, does the pink kiss mean and what does this liberation sound like?

A curtain opens, a dark corridor is revealed, illuminated by green spotlights. The space is strange and uncomfortable, the night guard/Electrosexual walks, somewhat anxiously, towards the back. There, green is replaced by red, and the character comes across two bodies on the ground, hugging each other like a single statue. The camera shows us, as if it were the guard's gaze, the focus on various parts of these semi-nude, sensual bodies, until the scene changes and the guard observes Nicky and Ixa on top of a stretcher. In this introduction, the dissonance of the sounds makes us feel the fear of the story, there is an ambiguity that pierces through. The sustained synthesized sound that you hear, and which in production language is called a  pad, is as the English term designates, a rug or cushion on which the other sounds rest. In fact, the metaphor is not unreasonable, because its nature is vocal, as if it were a requiem that sustains the souls of dead bodies. At the end of the video, the same  pad  has a different feel, now in outer space, it reminds us of a howling gust of wind. Whether it's music, sound effect or wind, the important thing is that it serves not only to set the mood but also to lead to the feeling that there is something hidden, that observes and has never been revealed.

Electrosexual designates this acid and ambient music. The second is easy to perceive, its quality is somber, with a soft beat that, if called to dance, has a slow swing, but no less involving. I would even say that it is oscillating, and that is why it is perhaps sexualized, which puts the body, ours that we hear and those of the actors, in the music and in the video. Being in the acid genre also brings decisive cultural connotations to the work. The origins of the name 'acid house' are discussed, some say that it is a commemorative reference to the psychedelic drugs that its listeners used, others say that it came from a form of derogatory slang to 'steal', due to the use of other artists. Given the context of the video, the first definition is the most appropriate, especially if we consider that 'acid', as a corrosive substance, can serve as a metaphor to imagine how the experience of listening to music allows bodies to free themselves from their chains. 

One would expect sensitive themes and challenging aesthetics to touch on ambiguous topics. This one is no exception. Kissing, or touching in general, is in this video at the center of a controversy over contamination, whether it's about the various diseases historically associated with the LGBTI+ community ( not by chance, the current Monkeypox seems to be on the same path, if not already is, of becoming another virus associated with the community… ), or by the very idea that being queer “catch”. Interestingly, music, and songs and musicians, have suffered a similar stigma throughout history. Since at least Ancient Greece, there has been a fear that certain songs can make people effeminate. That's why musicologist Philip Brettsaid that music often falls on the spectrum of the “dangerous substance” that leads people astray. There is nothing natural about it, there is even a romanticized and mystical reading that, if we go back to LÈVRES ROSES, is described very clearly. Whether it's the music that 'contaminates', or the touch of bodies, we don't know, but the discussion is set to be subverted later. 

It is only possible to turn the thing inside out if, as in the shirt, we know where the inside and the outside are. Or rather, if we know how to dress (because the reverse side of the shirt is a convention in our societies, nothing prevents me from starting to dress backwards!). Therefore, and feminists insist a lot on this idea, I can only subvert patriarchy, heteronormativity and, at the limit, the discourses of power, if I first take them – the outside – and then subvert them. In this case, it is strategic that Nicky Miller in the video, and Electrosexual in the song, do not forget this stereotype of contamination, because only then are they able to reverse its pejorative connotation. It is here that the dimension of self-liberation appears, in which touch is not a contamination, but rather an opening of the padlock: like music that leads to ecstasy (with or without drugs, does not matter for the case). From fear and apprehension, the possibility of access to other identity characteristics arises, to a discovery of the self that the external pressures of society tend to prevent. It is not a production and deflection of the problem, nor a naturalization of the phenomenon, policing the limits of the body or a trans panic. It is, rather, a questioning of what the binary system means, sex/gender, man/woman. There is an acceptance of everything that goes beyond the limits, the limits even of death, and the construction of a narrative and dramatic tension that is reinforced by the musical stability that accompanies it. We are taken on a journey that never ends, because identity is just that, a journey, preferably pink and full of kisses… to a discovery of the self that the external pressures of society tend to prevent. It is not a production and deflection of the problem, nor a naturalization of the phenomenon, policing the limits of the body or a trans panic. It is, rather, a questioning of what the binary system means, sex/gender, man/woman. There is an acceptance of everything that goes beyond the limits, the limits even of death, and the construction of a narrative and dramatic tension that is reinforced by the musical stability that accompanies it. We are taken on a journey that never ends, because identity is just that, a journey, preferably pink and full of kisses… to a discovery of the self that the external pressures of society tend to prevent. It is not a production and deflection of the problem, nor a naturalization of the phenomenon, policing the limits of the body or a trans panic. It is, rather, a questioning of what the binary system means, sex/gender, man/woman. There is an acceptance of everything that goes beyond the limits, the limits even of death, and the construction of a narrative and dramatic tension that is reinforced by the musical stability that accompanies it. We are taken on a journey that never ends, because identity is just that, a journey, preferably pink and full of kisses… a questioning of what the binary system means, sex/gender, man/woman. There is an acceptance of everything that goes beyond the limits, the limits even of death, and the construction of a narrative and dramatic tension that is reinforced by the musical stability that accompanies it. We are taken on a journey that never ends, because identity is just that, a journey, preferably pink and full of kisses… a questioning of what the binary system means, sex/gender, man/woman. There is an acceptance of everything that goes beyond the limits, the limits even of death, and the construction of a narrative and dramatic tension that is reinforced by the musical stability that accompanies it. We are taken on a journey that never ends, because identity is just that, a journey, preferably pink and full of kisses…

The lipstick kiss, the gel nails, the makeup, or the color pink, still transport many of us to the field of femininity. Electrosexual, Ixa and Nicky get involved in these codes, sensualize them, eroticize themselves with them, without wanting to set a norm, without openly stating or denying, if the pink kiss makes us a woman. Through instrumental music, voice, images, what is and is attached to the body, the historical and biological traits that say, as soon as we are born, 'this is a woman', 'that is a man' are highlighted. Nicky's voice is here a vehicle of desire, identification, and a taking beyond this story. In its reverberation, it is placed on the plane of the dream, of the unfulfilled that one hopes to see materialized. Musicologist Elizabeth WoodI would call this voice that challenges us to transgress the gender binarity a “bivocality”, “bisexual illusion”, and even suggests the term “sonic transformism”. None of these words intend to abuse terms that define our positions in the world, they just want to put music at the service of a reflection on who we are.

For this, the presence, in the description of the video, of adjectives such as “sultry”, hot or seductive is perhaps justified. There is also the “poetic”, which is related to the art of poetry, to inspired, sublime or ideal acts. With them, the listener is challenged to listen to sonic representations of lust, to think about how music can contain or be a story, to participate in this story. LÈVRES ROSES is all this and much more. We could question whether the bodies of Ixa and Miller, stripped and touched by Electrosexual, do not reify what it is to be trans, do not put them 'in the way' of a sexualizing, pathologizing, medicinal, repressive look. For some maybe it is, for others (like me) it is not. As Judith Butler says, it is necessary to take risks to subvert, 'put your finger on the wound', and in the most abstract arts and open to interpretations, such as music and music video, nothing is just one thing.