MOTHERSHIP - A CURATORIAL & ACTIVIST PROJECT ABOUT MOTHERHOOD
Artists and curators of this site AGF
and SUE-C.
make art with their children and so investigate this unique relationship and its collaboration potential.
By encouraging others to share their art created together with their children, we hope that this site will be a diverse and enriching space for this niche idea. The project was launched May 8th, International Mothersday 2011.
Submission Guidelines
We are looking for critical pieces that articulate intellectual or creative ways of art made in collaboration with children.
All submissions should be well executed. Please feel welcome to send any thoughts. Please view the mothership publishing agreement .
motherhood is realizing how delicate life is
motherhood is almost losing it
motherhood is fear
motherhood is tears
motherhood is acknowledging how hard it is
how hard you can be on yourself
how much you hate your job
how much you miss your freedom
motherhood is freedom
freedom to create your life with someone new
freedom to bring life into the world
motherhood is survival
motherhood is listening to them breathe
watching them breathe
checking if they're breathing
over
and
over again
motherhood is worrying
motherhood is protecting
motherhood is 3am
and 4am
and all times
motherhood wakes you up with a startle
motherhood takes your day away
and replaces night with day
motherhood is all of the things i want to do but don't have time
motherhood is all of the things i will not create
motherhood is pouring out the last drop
motherhood exists in the shadows
and the sunlight
the park
the school yard
the store aisle
the bathtub
it exists always
it subsists always
motherhood is close calls
motherhood is universal
Fold from 0 is originally an audio performance & the video projection with communicative attendance from audience.
With a strong belief in nature, earth, I began a new life in the middle of nowhere, on top of a beautiful hill in Japan as an artist, as a mother of two. Four years passed and the earthquake hit us.
Without a tool of electricity, fuel, water, our life fell into such chaos and primitive. Having seen total collapse of houses, shelters, we evacuated from our beloved village, which lies only 50-60 kilometers away from the vicious nuclear power station of Fukushima.
We lost the house that is not lost, lay down as it was before. Grass grows. Tulips blossom. Magnolia in rain. Persimmons ready. Just uncleanable dusts of radiation sway around in the air unseen.
I began learning origami on the way of refuge with my kids. An art of papers folded into create new worlds. We fold 1000 cranes when something to pray in Japanese tradition. Folding is like a hope. Folding often make humans stop conversations as to concentrate in themselves. On the contrary, it also makes them begin into the talk of deep subconscious thoughts.
We all must begin folding. Individually and together. For the future of positive goal, non-destructive life in peace that comes after understanding. It is like an origami sheet to become something new. The very strong metaphor to the issue.
I am a mother but I have not delivered you. I am the one who takes care, the one who thinks about daylife details, who listens, gets worried, encourages, interacts while defining boundaries. I love you. I have raised boychild and girlchild for the last five years (and known them for 10 years). Boychild is asperger syndrome, a mild form of autism. I filmed boychild for my haiku project: I’m not very good with video, but I’m trying, this was one of the first video I did. Boychild really got into the story telling. The “magic fish dog” he is playing with in the video replaced one of his dinosaur. At the time of the video, he was 13. Some of the unused raw footage are remarkable, boychild has this unique capacity to abstract himself from the real world and dive into a complete imaginary world of fantasy.
I feel like a mother I am like your mother but some will say, I’m not a “real” mother ... Even though I have fully embarked on motherhood. One can question what it takes to be a mother. I wonder. Biological mother can fail and show very little attachment and concern for their off spring... Even though she has carried in her womb her child, I wonder... How is it possible in the end to suffocate/ annihilate what you have created?
I have faced difficulties a few times but somehow we have managed together to overcome all our issues.
They have grown up, girlchild is now 18 and boychild is 17 but they are still children to me. Are they My children? Mine? No. I guess they belong to themselves.
Noise. Music. Effect. While constant noise of urban landscape effects largely negative on human beings. There is no considerable amount
of research documenting the effects of noise music on children. This piece is staging the joy of violent listening experience in a safe environment.
May 2011
Contribution from: SUE-C. and Jack, title: Magic Trumpet
I am fascinated by the sense of magic I see in children when they experience something new.
I have noticed this especially surrounding musical instruments or while discovering the sounds things make.
Jack was very excited to make his first trumpet sounds and I added a little video magic to match his wonderment.
Children have unrestricted imaginations and video technology has removed many restrictions of recorded imagery over the past decade.
Here the two meet.
The music was recorded with marbels running down a wooden-xylophon installtion created by Sue.C. Question remains: What happens in that barn. Red stillness.
In the mind of a child trains can be everywhere. Tire tracks on a muddy woods road become train tracks to follow. Imagination.
In this stop-frame video made from digital photographs we witness a young boy's imagination that he is driving a train on a train track.
It was Easter Sunday and Jack led me on a two hour walk down country roads on the island of Hailuoto.
We were only visiting this gorgeous island. We live in an urban area and do not have the freedom to wander for hours
with no cars to watch out for. It was amazing to be led down these roads even though I did have to carry him all the way back
while also pushing the stroller.
This was done in collaboration with Sue C. We used a panasonic video camera to record the initial movie with Lumi dancing, she wanted to be a dancing fairy flying off into the woods.
We afterwards converted the movie to iphone format and played from iphone to a mini projector, projecting on a wood log laying on the ground at night in the woods. The music is derived from a marble recording session I did with Lumi, I processed afterwards in max/msp with heavy pitching to have the effect of flying off.
AGF and Sue-C created the Mini Movie Movement in 2005.
A new edition is in the making.
