birthing the mother (Valetta, Malta)

The Grand Dames of (in)Justice and (dis)Obedience invite you to join us as we birth our kombucha mother.

This history of Malta is synonymous with both the delicate nature of lacemaking and the complex and violent history of the Maltese Cross and the Knights Hospitaller. Both are intertwined in this installation and performance which uses the concept of mothering / othering to question where power lies in material relationships. Subverting titles given by the Catholic Church to the Order of Malta, we become Grand Dames of (in)Justice and (dis)Obedience, in service to our mother.
‘Birthing the mother’ invites visitors to trouble the binaries of nature/culture, living/non-living, man/woman, human/nonhuman, eater/eaten. The work comprises a living artefact, our ‘mother’ who has been gestating in the amniotic waters of debates on biotechnology futures. Mother has been growing for over a year, listening to stories of biotechnological care and control. She is now ready to be reborn in you.

We will birth our mother and invite visitors to consume these debates through a multisensory multispecies ritual through which they will become part of the work. This is a communal birth, bound up with ideas of generosity, consumption, limits, care and obedience. What does it mean to birth and then consume our mother? What does it mean to become part of something larger than yourself? What are the limits of care and control in such a relationship? Much as our vessel has been the surrogate in which mother has been gestated, participants will become the surrogate, the nurse, the medium through which she speaks.

Join us in this experience and speak the truths she brings to your tongue.