In Bodies We Trust : Tongue Smell Color Revisited

In Bodies We Trust: Tongue Smell Color Revisited (2017) is a reflection on the years-long work of Tongue Smell Color created and performed by Dr. Brenda Dixon Gottschild and Hellmut Gottschild in the early 2000s. A movement exploration of the implications of race, sex, and power, Tongue Smell Color took their own relationship as the foundation for examining their interracial relationship and the complex, layered histories embedded within their experiences and embodiments of white man and Black woman. Citing important cultural touchstones from the storied exploitation of Sara Baartman (the so-called "Venus Hottentot") to the media's treatment of tennis star Serena Williams, the pair grapple with popular culture and notions of exoticism and desire. The interiority of their relationship and their own inner lives—curiosity about the other, exoticizing one's own partner—are contended with publicly in this episodic performance.