“Bites and Kisses” was created during the wave of New Queer Cinema in the early 1990s when depictions of two men showing even the slightest hint of affection in main-stream cinema and television was extremely rare and commonly regarded with unrestrained disgust by a vast majority of the general public. Before “Will and Grace,” before Ellen came out on her television show and way before online porn, this compilation of heavily jump-cut video images and frequently unrelated audio clips, explores love and simple and not so simple affection between men. It also explores facets of fear and loathing from within and outside the gay community. Sampling clips from a variety of film, video and audio sources, most of the gay characters shown were portrayed by straight actors playing gay for pay. You will also hear iconic gay divas in the soundtracks. These video mash-ups are each about 30 seconds long. The total length of the series is 17 minutes.
In an allusion to department store television set displays, “Bites and Kisses” was shown looped on three monitors with three channels, of the same edited video, slightly out of sync, at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, and at Simon Watson Arts in New York. It was also shown as a single channel projection in a small room, alluding to peep show arcades, at Amanda M. Obering Gallery in Los Angeles.