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What Is In A Kiss?

WUNC | By Laura Lee,
Frank Stasio
Published February 10, 2016 at 12:06 PM EST
A new multimedia installation in Raleigh looks at the intimacy of the kiss on public display.
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Flickr Creative Commons
A new multimedia installation in Raleigh looks at the intimacy of the kiss on public display.

Film professor Marsha Gordon; librarian and digital archivist Josephine McRobbie; and architect and visual artist Louis Cherry talk about their latest project

When Thomas Edison put the first kiss on film at his Black Maria studio in 1896, it was nothing short of scandalous. The 23-second, silent, black and white footage put the intimate on public display.

A new interactive multimedia project in Raleigh explores the intimacy of the kiss by inviting members of the public to have their kisses filmed in the same style as that first infamous lip-locking.

Raleigh's Flanders Gallery hosts the installation, Public Displays, on Sunday, Feb. 14, at 5 p.m.

Host Frank Stasio talks with three of the project's collaborators: North Carolina State University film professor Marsha Gordon; librarian and digital archivist Josephine McRobbie; and architect and visual artist Louis Cherry.

Take a look at the original video from 1896 below: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUyTcpvTPu0

Below are some of the videos included in the installation:

Copyright 2016 North Carolina Public Radio
Laura Lee
Laura Lee began her journalism career as a producer and booker at NPR. She returned to her native North Carolina to manage The State of Things, a live daily statewide show on WUNC. After working as a managing editor of an education journalism start-up, she became a writer and editor at a national education publication, Edutopia. She then served as the news editor at Carolina Public Press, a statewide investigative newsroom. In 2022, she worked to build collaborative coverage of elections administration and democracy in North Carolina.

Laura received her master’s in journalism from the University of Maryland and her bachelor’s degree in political science and J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
See stories by Laura Lee
Frank Stasio
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
See stories by Frank Stasio