Dimensions / 20.3×25.4cm (8x10inch)
Medium / B&W Photograph

Charlotte Moorman performed Jim McWilliams’s Sky Kiss from 1968. Out of a desire to represent the erotic subject of kissing, often depicted in art history, in an unconventional form, graphic designer and composer McWilliams drew up a scene of Moorman drifting aloft with the cello’s endpin severed from the ground, to meet an immaterial lover. The idea was that Moorman would fly up by a helium-filled balloon and play the cello in mid-air. The first attempt was made in Philadelphia in March 1968, but the balloon did not succeed in flying up. In the 6th Annual Avant-Garde Festival of New York that took place in the Central Park in the evening of 14 September 1968, the balloon narrowly took off, but because of helium shortage, it did not float consistently for some time, only to keep rising and falling like a kite. Dressed in red leotard tights and a satin cape, Moorman played pop songs with an aerial theme. Moorman’s Sky Kiss performances were staged in different places until the 1980s, and the picture shows its 1982 occasion in Linz.