(corporeal body + feminism + media/materialist values + social development ) = ?
Through this work I hope to inspire people to consider the changing western definitions of beauty, femininity, desire, human progress and intellectual/biological truths. I mean to draw no conclusions about gender roles, family, childbirth or western ideals of progress through this work. Instead I hope to illustrate the anxiety and schizophrenia that is borne from information-, privilege-, and option-overload.
References central to this work:
WAITING, Faith Wilding
In 1972 Faith Wilding performed a now famous early feminist piece called WAITING at Womanhouse, a collaborative project led by Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro, which involved the transformation of a victorian house into an exhibit that explored women’s experience with domestic space. In WAITING, seated on a chair with her hands passively lying in her lap, Wilding rocks back and forth and chants a litany of anticipated acts that narrate the forced passivity of a woman’s life in patriarchy:
“Waiting for someone to feed me…. to change my diaper…. to put me on the toilet…. Waiting to grow up…. for my breasts to develop…. to have a boyfriend…. Waiting for my wedding night…. for sex…. for my baby to come…. Waiting for menopause…. for my body to break down…. Waiting for sleep. Waiting….”
GENERATIVITY vs. STAGNATION, Erik Erikson.
GROW OR DIE. Social psychologist and psychoanalyst Erik Erikson described the seventh life stage of human development as generativity vs. stagnation. Applying to “middle-adulthood”, 31-60 years, the theory of generativity (the felt need to leave something of lasting value to those who live after us) is deeply rooted in a stance that embraces learning and change. Similarly, it can also be applied to our biological world: doesn’t everything that ceases to grow begin to die? In almost every direction we look we can observe a continuum of life and death: plants born of seed grow to maturity, produce their own seed, and die.
