(in)fertile territories project - current status
Ideologies of motherhood are extremely limited in our culture, particularly in the mainstream media. My current practice-research project is helping to produce other, more sophisticated imaginations of what it means to be a woman related to (non)motherhood. As such, my work focuses on the subject of women’s experiences of infertility, particularly experience at the point of diagnosis in medical contexts, such as when presented with ultrasound scans and/or blood test results as ‘proof’ of the condition. As a dance artist and academic, I am interested in foregrounding the embodied, subjective, and emotional aspects of women’s experiences of fertility-related issues, amongst ever-increasing technological innovations. In real terms, this means the hope to run a series of workshops and performances, in collaboration with other women experiencing fertility-related issues, and specialists working across the fields of Psychology, Sociology and Medicine, to expand understanding of the shock that fertility-related issues blow to women’s gendered identities. The project aims to help women feel agency in a process that can be significantly alienating, when constantly amongst cold hard medical devices and medical expertise, despite it being their bodies that are under investigation.