The Mothernists, Rotterdam

Mothernists and children at Upominki - image courtesy of Weronika Zielinska

Last summer Cultural ReProducers took part in not one but two international gatherings exploring the role of motherhood in creative work. A little while ago we shared our report on Part I, the Motherhood and Creative Practice Conference in London, England. Now at last we're sharing Part II, on The Mothernists in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

From June 5th - 7th, 2015,  a group of artists, curators and scholars came together in Rotterdam to take part in The Mothernists, a remarkable three-day conference on cultural reproduction and creativity in caring labor.  The event was organized by the Dutch based m/other voices foundation, and sparked by the work of the Danish artist and writer Lise Haller Baggesen, whose recent book, “Mothernism” and its interconnected installation work reframe the language of the mother-artist.

a shared meal before the event at PrintRoom

In contrast to the large-scale Motherhood and Creative Practice Conference in London earlier the same week, the Mothernists was an intimate gathering, emphasizing the exchange of ideas. It featured thirteen presenters from eight countries, a gallery exhibition, a reading / book launch event, and a roundtable discussion, all free and open to the public. Since several presenters were invited to extend their stays in the region to present at both conferences, we had the chance to catch highlights we’d missed in London along with plenty of new material. The Mothernists also offered an important opportunity to process it all: over homemade meals and a shared bottle of ouzo, women from across Europe, Israel, and the Americas had some of the most complex and provocative conversations I’ve heard on artist-parenthood to date.

m/other voices began as a research project initiated by artist, writer, and curator Deirdre M. Donoghue in 2013, and has since developed into a full-fledged organization supporting critical writing, creative projects, and a range of events reflecting on the crucial role of the maternal figure as a thinker and maker. From the m/other voices website:

m/other voices considers maternity as a verb, as a type of labor, rather than as a noun pointing to

presenters at Printroom (from l to r: Lise Haller Baggesen, Karin de Jong,
Christa Donner, Deirdre Donoghue, and Andrea Francke.

a fixed, physiological state of being, the notion of maternity will be examined here as an attitude and as a discipline in the production of art and knowledge. 

This approach was present in every aspect of the conference, resulting in a unique hybrid of critical thought, generosity, and creative exchange. Active participants included not just mothers but also fathers, m/other voices followers, some of whom are not parents themselves, and caregivers of many kinds. Between presentations, participants were offered free massages by local doulas, those women skilled in caring for women first entering motherhood. And instead of congregating in a hotel, (m)other voices coordinated a network of local artists to host out-of-town visitors in their homes (and for a lucky few, a fully-outfitted camper van).

The Mothernists opened on Friday night with a potluck meal and a book launch/reading at PrintRoom, a vibrant bookstore and risograph workshop piled high with small-press, artist-made publications from around the world. Lise Haller Baggesen kicked off the evening with selections from “Mothernism”, followed by dynamic presentations by Andrea Francke on her project “The Invisible Spaces of Parenthood,” Christa Donner on “Propositions, Manifestos and Experiments,” and actress and writer Terri Hawkes on “Performing Motherhood.”

Andrea Francke (top) and mothernist doula care (bottom)

Saturday offered a full day of lectures by curators, writers, and artists including Natalie Loveless, Courtney Kessel, Irene Perez, Shira Richter, Rachel Epp Buller, Mirjam Westen, and many more. For those who couldn’t make it to Rotterdam, video of these presentations are now available online! The sessions took place at Lees Zaal West, a remarkable volunteer-run reading room, book exchange, and community event space created in response to the closure of many of the city’s local libraries.  The presentations were unified in supporting the vital role of motherhood in cultural work, though it is interesting to note that what this means may depend on where you live. The US is exceptionally poor in its support of working parents, with no paid maternity leave and a standard cost for childcare that often exceeds that of rent. In comparison, the Netherlands (as well as Denmark, Japan, Germany…) provides sliding-scale childcare and paid parental leave that encourage mothers to return to work. So while Dutch presenters focused on the re-valuing of maternal caregiving, American and British participants sought support in the form of supplemental childcare to find time for their work. Beyond this point, however, the stigmas and other challenges surrounding motherhood and career seem to be universal, profoundly impacting the type of cultural work that is produced, experienced, and supported both critically and financially.

In the evening, a group meal at the Ethiopian restaurant M'n Schoonmoeder or “My Mother-in-Law” offered space for further conversation before overflowing out and across the street to the nonprofit gallery Upominki for a richly interconnected exhibition curated by Gallery Director Weronika Zielinska, who we learned had just given birth to her second child just a few days before the opening!

The event closed on Sunday with an informal roundtable discussion to process the weekend’s events. There was a sense of urgency to the conversation, and a commitment to continue it in various forms. I packed my bags to return home feeling inspired, supported, and that with collaborators like these, a whole lot is possible. The revolution may happen slowly, organized via Skype after our children are in bed or off to school, but it’s underway. Stay tuned.

Motherhood and Creative Practice, London

the inimitable Griselda Pollock addresses the audience at the Motherhood and Creative Practice Conference.

This June, Cultural ReProducers took part in not one but two international gatherings exploring the role of motherhood in creative work. Here's our rundown of Part I:  the Motherhood and Creative Practice Conference in London. Stay tuned for more about some of the great people and projects we encountered, and for Part II: the Mothernists, a three-day event in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

For anyone still harboring doubts that great artistic and scholarly work can go hand in hand with the labor of raising a child, this year's Motherhood and Creative Practice Conference, presented from June 1-2 at London South Bank University, offered a resounding affirmation of critical maternal thought.

Rachel Epp Buller presents on lactivist art intervention

During the past five years there has been a groundswell in work exploring the intersections of artmaking and parenthood. As soon as the call for abstracts was announced online, news of the  Motherhood and Creative Practice Conference spread rapidly despite its modest online presence. Organizers Dr. Elena Marchevska and Valerie Walkerdine had expected interest from a small group of local scholars, but soon found their inbox filled with more than 100 proposals from around the world. Being the skilled improvisers that mothers often are, they rose to the occasion and organized two jam-packed days of multimedia presentations by more than 60 leading feminist scholars, psychoanalysts, curators and artists, complemented by a rich program of film screenings, performances, and small exhibitions.

With so many presenters on the schedule, three panels ran simultaneously every hour in different parts of a labyrinthine LSBU building. Unlike more broadly-themed conferences in which deciding which panel to attend depends on your area of specialty, here it was often painfully difficult to choose. To get a sense of the options you can check out the full program online. Philosopher, artist, and psychoanalyst Bracha Ettinger opened the event with a heady discussion on carriance and the matrixial gaze accompanied by a projection of her hypnotic video work (I have since decided that all future lectures involving dense theoretical language should be presented this way). Faith Wilding and Irina Aristarkhova launched the second day with their riveting exploration of the real and speculative ramifications of surrogacy, IVF tourism, exogenesis, and the global market for

Christa introducing Cultural ReProducers

human tissue and egg donation. And prominent art historian and cultural scholar Griselda Pollock miraculously wove everything together into two smart and thoughtful session summaries.

Efforts were made to offer on-site childcare during the conference, albeit for a fee, but unfortunately - whether due to cost, ambivalence, or lack of information - not enough participants signed up to make this option viable in the end. A few mothers bounced, rocked, and fed their babies through sessions, while others worked out arrangements with family members. Several had to rush off before the day was done to collect their kids from local creches or schools.

Those of us visiting from out of town fit in time to visit some of London's great cultural institutions, and parental art seemed to be everywhere, from the abundance of 19th century maternal imagery at the Victoria and Albert Museum to Jaan Toomik's "Dancing with Dad" (2003) at Whitechapel Gallery to the Tate Modern's remarkable Sonia Delaunay retrospective, which highlighted Delaunay's first work of abstraction: a blanket created for her newborn son in 1911.

Mary Kelly was there in spirit, and on video

Like any really good party, not everyone could make it. One notable absence was Mary Kelly, matron saint of mother-artists and a scheduled keynote speaker, who had to cancel at the last minute due to a scheduling conflict. A video was screened of her lecture earlier that week (though technical difficulties made it hard to decipher), followed by a response by scholar and MaMSIE co-founder Dr. Lisa Baraitser. There were noticeably few women of color present, a reflection of another imbalance in academia and the art world that will be important to consider as this conversation continues to evolve. On the intergenerational spectrum of things, though, the conference was incredible. Nursing mothers in the midst of their graduate studies exchanged experiences with seasoned feminist grandmothers. The discussion was also enriched by the voices of artists without children, including Miriam Schaer, who spoke eloquently about cultural bias against childless women and the challenges of “reverse mothering,” or caring for an aging parent.

processing some serious maternal thought over drinks

Beyond the formal presentations, this gathering brought together an incredible number of like-minded artists, curators, and scholars to meet in person for the first time. Catching a quick bite to eat between sessions we connected with members of Dublin’s Mothership Project, Rotterdam's m/other voices, London’s Enemies of Good Art and Invisible Spaces of Parenthood. Informal convoys took over nearby hotel lounges and restaurants to talk late into the night. After closing remarks on Tuesday, LSBU’s Edric Theater buzzed with women exchanging contact information, taking group photographs, and planning future projects. It seems clear that these conversations are just getting started, and we look forward to seeing what’s to come.

Save the Dates: Motherhood + Art Panels Galore!

The intersection of motherhood and art seems to be on a lot of people's minds these days, and it's the subject of a whole slew of amazing (and all FREE) public panels exploring career, art practice, feminism, and motherhood taking place this February in Chicago. Christa Donner will discuss Cultural ReProducers on two separate panels, along with a lot of incredibly inspiring artists, curators, historians and critics. We hope to see some of you at these events, and look forward to future conversations online and in person.

Friday, February 14th, 10am - 5pm (MOTHERHOOD from 1-3pm)
TRACERS TAKES ON FEMINISM: LGBTQ, MOTHERHOOD, AND RACE
ThreeWalls / 119 N. Peoria / 2C / Chicago, IL

This Valentine's Day, grab your sweeheart and take the day to take in three panels on three topics hosted by the feminist book club TRACERS at ThreeWalls (As an added bonus, you can check out the amazing Faith Wilding retrospective while you're there).

MOTHERHOOD Panelists include Lorelei Stewart (moderator), Christa Donner
, Brittany Southworth Laflamme
, Judy Ledgerwood
, Laura Letinsky
, Romi Crawford
, Julie Rodrigues Widholm
, and Christine Tarkowski.

for information on the full day of events, visit the headline link above!

Saturday, February 15th, 9am - 5pm
THE 'M' WORD:  THE FEMINIST ART PROJECT DAY OF PANELS AT THE CAA

Columbia College Chicago / Stage Two / 618 S. Michigan Ave / 2nd floor, Chicago, IL

This year, The Feminist Art Project presents an entire DAY of panels at the annual College Art Association (CAA) Conference, exploring the representation of the maternal in art and visual culture. Topics of discussion include art historical readings of maternity, the maternal body, exhibitions that address maternity/motherhood, collaboration with children, and what it means to be a mother and an artist today in relationship to the issue of M/E/A/N/I/N/G on artists/mothers! Cultural ReProducers will participate in the panel on Exhibitionary / Curatorial practice.

Below is a brief rundown of the day's events. For panelists and more detailed information, check out the TCAF Day of Panels site. Note: The following panels are free and open to the public. You do NOT have to be a member of the CAA or registered for the conference to attend.

9:10-10:30am
Historical Perspectives on Representing the Maternal
Building upon burgeoning scholarship such as Rachel Epp Buller's anthology Reconciling Art and Motherhood, Myrel Chernick's and Jennie Klein's The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art, and the work of the MaMSIE (Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics) network, this panel presents historical perspectives on maternal subject positions and the depiction of maternal imagery.

10:40 am-12pm
Motherhood and the Exhibitionary Platform: Considering the Implications of Maternity Through the Curatorial Lens
This session will address exhibitions that have been premised upon the idea of motherhood and the maternal, within the broader context of feminism and the history and theory of exhibition making. In addition to considering the curatorial role itself through a "curator as maternalist" paradigm, presentations will reflect various curatorial methodologies from traditional museum scale exhibitions to hybrid or itinerant curatorial projects that engage various forms of social space, including the home. By bringing together various critical feminist positions alongside divergent curatorial strategies the goal of this session is to chart an evolution of practice via exemplary models for thinking and doing.

12:40-2pm
From Sentiment to Sexuality: Revisiting the Maternal Body as Threat
This panel revisits the "threat" of the maternal body, both in practice and theory. Amongst other topics, papers will address the historical rejection of sentimentality by feminist artist mothers, the sexuality of the mother-child relationship, non-reproductive and non-heteronormative maternal bodies, and the changing perspectives on essentialism and the female/maternal body today.

2:10-3:30pm
Mothers / Artists / Children
What are the implications when an artist brings her children into her work? Where is the line between collaboration and exploitation? When can children give consent, or even be considered artists in their own right? This panel addresses twentieth-century and contemporary incarnations of the often-controversial mother / artist / child triangle.

3:40-5pm
Revisiting M/E/A/N/I/N/G #12
In 1992, Susan Bee and Mira Schor, editors of the art journal M/E/A/N/I/N/G, published FORUM: ON MOTHERHOOD, ART, AND APPLE PIE. They invited a group of artist/mothers to respond to a series of questions about their artistic careers and lives as mothers. Although none of the women regretted becoming mothers, most of them talked about their difficult choices, and how they maintained a strict separation between family and studio practice. Twenty years later, we believe we are seeing many more women who are interested in integrating their familial and artistic lives. After a short statement from Susan Bee, five artists respond to the M/E/A/N/I/N/G issue in relationship to their lives and work now.

..........................................................................................

For those of you not in Chicago this February, we'll post any video/audio online as soon as we can get our hands on it. In the meantime, you can read/watch/listen to these great panels on the topic:

Colloquy: Parenthood in the Art World (MOCA Los Angeles, 2013)
Taking Custody: The Double Life of the Artist Mother (Pratt, NYC, 2012)
Forum: On Motherhood, Art, and Apple Pie M/E/A/N/I/N/G #12 (1992)