Love in White-Inked Mother’s Milk — Hope Austin
I’d like to dis-member myself, see where my heart is faltering. Split myself in two to see the breastmilk-blood caught in that particular place.
An infant is bleeding internally. Her mother is simultaneously unable to walk unassisted. The infant grows up, her feet go numb. As do her mother’s. An irregular heartbeat underscores red countdown clocks and orthopedist-offices-turned-clubs and frantic love-math equations. Love in White-Inked Mother’s Milk is the artist’s meditation on self-love as an active practice. Through a collage-like, associative structure Love in White-Inked Mother’s Milk weaves threads of a mother-daughter relationship in vignettes, remembrances of the childhood ritual of Quaker meeting, and anxious confessionals to unravel the complexities of these intertwined mother-daughter histories.
Is radical self-love a reflection of our ability to love humanity more largely, to love/locate ourselves within a community, to remember that we exist within a particular lineage of bodies? What is it to be a biological echo, having been so lovingly and at times complexly sustained by the bodies that came before us? The thematic interests of this performance are particularly in conversation with the work of theorist Hélène Cixous. The initial development of this project was funded by the Galgano Research Grant at Muhlenberg College. Creator/deviser Hope Austin makes her professional debut in this exploration of love, community, and grief.
An infant is bleeding internally. Her mother is simultaneously unable to walk unassisted. The infant grows up, her feet go numb. As do her mother’s. An irregular heartbeat underscores red countdown clocks and orthopedist-offices-turned-clubs and frantic love-math equations. Love in White-Inked Mother’s Milk is the artist’s meditation on self-love as an active practice. Through a collage-like, associative structure Love in White-Inked Mother’s Milk weaves threads of a mother-daughter relationship in vignettes, remembrances of the childhood ritual of Quaker meeting, and anxious confessionals to unravel the complexities of these intertwined mother-daughter histories.
Is radical self-love a reflection of our ability to love humanity more largely, to love/locate ourselves within a community, to remember that we exist within a particular lineage of bodies? What is it to be a biological echo, having been so lovingly and at times complexly sustained by the bodies that came before us? The thematic interests of this performance are particularly in conversation with the work of theorist Hélène Cixous. The initial development of this project was funded by the Galgano Research Grant at Muhlenberg College. Creator/deviser Hope Austin makes her professional debut in this exploration of love, community, and grief.
