Milkstained

Milkstained, M.A.M.A. (Mother Artists Making Art: a collaboration with Athena Kanaris, Deborah Oliver, Lisa Schoyer, Karen Schwenkmeyer,  and Lisa Mann.) September 13, 1998.  Live performance staged at "All Over the Map" L.A. Freewaves 6th Celebration of Video and New Media, Electronic Café International, Santa Monica, CA,  in front of an in-person audience and simultaneously live-streamed (a cutting edge technology at the time).

ABOUT:

This performance explored the sensual aspects and labor of breastfeeding.

In her book, Feminist Art and the Maternal, author Andrea Liss writes:

"I will never forget the opening of the piece, in which a nude woman lay sideways on a horizontal pedestal that was beautifully draped with light-colored fabric, her back facing the audience. A creamy-white cloth covered part of her buttocks and legs. The dramatically lit figure against the darkness of the stage and the gorgeous power of this intimate scene reminded me of Jacques- Louis David’s painting "The Death of Marat" (1793). The element of liquid was unequivocal. A white substance began to flow forth and run down her back, at first slowly and then with more force as it stained the material and flowed into a large draped basin on the floor. Magnificently, against the dead silence of the scene, the ebb and flow of the [pumping of a] woman’s breast milk were audible. After this singular opening, the stage was filled with multiple activities performed by the M.A.M.A. members, including reading texts about and projecting images of themselves breast-feeding, expressing their milk onstage, and building a tower of plastic champagne glasses that they filled with their own fresh milk. The sounds of bodily fluids punctuated the performance, 'spilling, pouring, dripping, a sense of a fantastic abundance, the release of bodily fluids as in the sexual act, the tension and feeling of disorder produced by liquids overrunning their containers.' (from M.A.M.A. statement)"

​- Andrea Liss

       Feminist Art and the Maternal, Andrea Liss, 2008. See pages 75-79   Downloadable pdf

"I had the feeling that I was watching something momentous taking place, much like seeing television for the first time in the forties and watching the moon walk in the sixties. Kind of overwhelmed with the magic of it all and not really understanding how it was being done. And the images weren't about science, sports, war, or entertainment, but rather about another kind of hero–a mother caring for a child."

​ -Elizabeth Polifka