Formative Assessment

Draft Research Question

How might a soundscape made up of re-enacted memories explore a feminist framing of contemporary motherhood that privileges affect? 

Keywords

• auto-fiction

• translations

• recordings

• re-enactment

• cultural narratives

• motherhood

• maternal subjectivity

• maternal speech

• soundscape

• affect

• index

• feminism

• domestic

• subjective becoming

• intersubjective encounters

Aims

I want to understand where the subjective becoming undertaken during a process of self-work can be articulated materially. I want to understand how a logic of affect might aid in the installation strategy of a sound work. I want to the share the messiness of real parenting in the public domain as an antidote to the polarised perception of the good and bad mother. I want to explore the space between reality and re-enactment as a method for catharsis. I want to play in auto-fiction. I want to know what the residual thing of an experience is, what it ‘feels like’, how this is bound to memory and what this has to do with affect. I want to explore the aural dimensions of maternal speech. I want to replicate the feels like of the mind, the self looking at the self. I want to grapple against the inherited performance of mothering. 

Enquiry Methods

The first method is a soundscape made from recordings re-enacting both outer and inner maternal speech. Through a process of self-reflection on the everyday encounters with my children, I performed the various kinds of internal chatter: Lists of things to do, new mantras I tried to embody, and the impending tick of the rushing clock. Other parts of speech are also included: listening sounds made through my practice of Listening Partnerships with other mothers, and large loud cathartic outbursts I wished I had or hadn't delivered. My aim for this work is to research an installation strategy that uses affect as a key presentation methodology. I see the next two methods as drawings. The first is a technological mediation of intersubjective encounters. Using google voice-to-text I am recording short bursts of family conversations in the kitchen to wonder about what the affective dimension of a conversation might be. Finally, I have been taking selfies using my i-phone each time I cry in front of my children. I first conceptualised this work as a title in response to an Instagram feed full of seemingly happy, creative well-adjusted mothers. However, once I began to make the photographs I was surprised at how the desire to document an otherwise overwhelming experience began to interrupt the experience itself. As if the creation of the image became a resource for self-management. 

Images

Please see the studio research page

Bibliography in Chicago Turabian

Please see bibliography page