Motherhood and Creative Practice
Motherhood and creative practice: Maternal structures in creative work
June 1-2, 2015
School of Arts and Creative Industries, London South Bank University, London
Motherhood and creative practice: Maternal structures in creative work is an international and interdisciplinary conference that addresses ongoing debates about hospitality, solidarity and encounter as concepts in creative practice, and how they relate to contemporary issues of mothering. Mothering involves commitment to creative balance and combining everyday chores. We are interested how practitioners combine art and mothering, activism and mothering, academia and mothering, science and mothering, mothering and allomothering. The conference will look at practice where the creative exploration, writing and theory about the mOther cannot be separated from one another. Ettinger reveals the intricate connections between critical theory on maternal and creative practice. According to Vigneault, the porous spaces of work that engages with the maternal as concept presents passageways which allow the viewer and reader to move through and between the various levels of text and image, theory and art, in a constant shift between modes of production (2009:69). There is a gradual, yet sustained increase in creative practices which, starting from the challenges posed by the above concepts, explore the maternal in various encounter-event formations. The conference will also look into female experiences and sexual lifestyles that explore the encounters of infertility, medical intervention, adoption and fostering, queer mothering and childlessness by choice or not. We invite scholars and artists to also explore the creative embodiment of intergenerational trauma and the complex territory of mother-daughter relationships, and bring into dialogue social, scientific and artistic perspectives.
The conference will also encompass the exhibition “Alternative Maternals” curated by Laura Gonzalez, a curated performance section led by Faith Wilding’s performative reading of her memoirs, and a post-graduate discussion room. The post-graduate room will be enriched with performative texts, films, visual and audio works (we strongly encourage postgraduate students to send proposals and abstracts).
A full registration fee includes morning and afternoon break refreshments, two lunches, free entry to exhibition and performances and conference reception event.
The call for papers submission deadline has been extended to 4 March 2015.
