Bootlicking

Pierre Gervois, Bootlicking (Experiment in Linguistic Investigation), single-channel video, MPEG-4 movie, 720 x 1280 pixels, 02:22.

In the early nineteen nineties, when I was a student in Paris, my French literature Professor invited Philosopher Paul Ricoeur to give a lecture to the class about the concept of metaphor, a topic explored by Ricoeur in his 1975 book The Rule of Metaphor. I was incredibly excited by this lecture, and took notes non-stop during Ricoeur’s brilliant speech. After the lecture, I came on stage to express my sincere admiration to the philosopher and handed him the small yellow poster made by the students at the occasion of this lecture and asked him for an autograph. He looked a little bit surprised, but signed the poster. My literature professor, also on stage, looked at me with an air of disdain, in a silent disapprobation, as if it was inappropriate and utterly vulgar to treat a distinguished philosopher as a Rock Star.

Thirty years after, I wanted to investigate further what metaphors really were, going beyond philosophical and literary critical tools.

I decided to conduct a linguistic experiment by actually performing a metaphor and observing the result.

I thought about several possible metaphors to focus my research on, and “Bootlicking” became the perfect candidate for this investigation for three reasons.

1-The latin root of Linguistic is “Lingua” (Tongue).

2-“Bootlicking” is a metaphor about the action of a tongue.

3-I planned to actually use my tongue to conduct the experiment.

“Bootlicking” is an Experiment in Linguistic Investigation, borrowing to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn his categorization of the Gulag Archipelago as an Experiment in Literary Investigation.

The performance was conducted and recorded in a New York City photography studio without audience.

I invited each participant to self identify with his/her social class, with the help of suggested income brackets.