About the event

Speaker: Dr Laura Bissell

Chair: Dr Lucy Weir

Abstract

How do mother/artists who make autobiographical performance grapple with ambivalent experiences of motherhood? Challenging disparaging representations of matrescence, (or those rendered invisible as in pregnancy loss/infertility), contemporary artists working in performance use strategies of mimesis, embodiment, relationality to explore historically pejorative theoretical concepts and aesthetics in new, feminist ways

Content warning: This talk makes reference to experiences of pregnancy loss and infertility.

Biography

Laura Bissell is an Athenaeum Research Fellow and Acting Deputy Director of Research at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She is co-editor of Performance in a Pandemic with Lucy Weir (Routledge, 2021) and Making Routes: Journeys in Performance 2010-2020 with David Overend (Triarchy, 2021), as well as the author of Bubbles: Reflections on Becoming Mother (Luath, 2021).