Abstract
The deepening environmental crises we face today are proving to be unequally distributed among humankind. Environmental catastrophes and the adverse effects of the climate emergency are more acutely experienced by women and those in their care. In this chapter I consider how the conceptual art of Japanese artist Ai Hasegawa can reconfigure thinking about the social and cultural impact of environmental change through its provocative reimagining of human reproduction and caregiving. In particular, I investigate how Hasegawa’s visual installations expand ethical debates about the performance of human and nonhuman reproduction while taking into account the global contemporary challenges of climate change, rising sea levels, overfishing, food shortages, environmental contamination, and inter-species relations.
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Notes
- 1.
In one of the seminal guides to Performance Studies, Richard Schechner (Performance Studies, 2013) notes that anything can be read ‘as’ performance, including visual artworks. Reading a static object ‘as’ performance means considering how the work reflects the performance of national narratives, social behaviours, and/or embodied cultural practices. Schechner writes that ‘any action that is framed, enacted, presented, highlighted or displayed is a performance’ (2). Hasegawa’s visual and participatory visual artworks are performative because they invite spectators to question the current behaviours that surround reproduction and think about how pregnancy, childbirth and child-rearing are perceived and performed within particular national cultural contexts.
- 2.
Performance art, particularly feminist performance art, has its origins in galleries and public sites rather than conventional theatre spaces. Many of these performances, such as those of Carolee Schneemann, Yoko Ono, Valie Export or Joan Jonas responded to the long history of painting and sculptures depicting female bodies created by male artists, which dominated (and still largely dominate) galleries. Historically, the maternal body was frequently represented in galleries and churches in images of the Madonna and child. While feminist performance art often features the bodies of the artists, many engage in mixed-media that include a combination of videos, sculptures, paintings and/or a variety of textiles. Resistance to male-authored representations of women’s bodies was most apparent in Deborah de Robertis’ unauthorised performance in the Louvre, Paris, in 2017 (and her earlier, similar provocations) where she exposed her genitals in front of the Mona Lisa, protesting the dominance of women represented as nude models rather than artists in the gallery.
- 3.
The term ‘adaptation’ has its roots in evolutionary biology as an unconscious dynamic process by which species develop traits that make them better suited to their environment and better able to survive changing conditions. This chapter, however, is interested in humans’ conscious strategies for adaptation in full acknowledgement of their Anthropocentric biases.
- 4.
Dilemma Charts are most commonly found in women’s glamour magazines as a means to help readers answer difficult relationship questions using a pseudo-scientific methodology that most readers recognise as artificial. Such charts offer advice to readers regarding tricky ethical situations or decisions. They allow readers to compare or rate their decisions against other people and offer essentialising and reductionist conclusions about what ‘type’ of person the reader is. The outcomes either affirm or undermine existing ideas about one’s relationship, sex life etc.
- 5.
The work begins with a 16-foot embryo resembling a tadpole, moves through spliced cross-sections of a womb carrying a foetus at various stages and ends with a 46-foot newborn.
- 6.
The AU was constructed in a lab at the Port Stephens Fisheries Institute, in New South Wales, Australia, by biologists Nick Otway and Megan Ellis as an attempt to increase the numbers of endangered grey nurse sharks. These sharks are often incidentally captured in commercial and recreational fishing. This is particularly problematic for this species and its shrinking populations due to the animal’s long gestational period (9–12 months) and the in utero cannibalism by the strongest developing foetus of its brothers and sisters. In the experiment, Otway and Ellis used a non-endangered species, the wobbegong shark (Orectolobus ornatus), and were successful in bringing six embryos to term after spending the final 18 days before birth in the AU (Otway and Ellis).
- 7.
By linking sexuality to class and the capitalist disparity of wealth, Firestone shows how the sex into which one is born is shaped by social and cultural factors. Today, however, any discussion around how women’s liberation relates to reproduction would need to take into account the growing transgender community and those who identify as women without female reproductive biology.
- 8.
Ancient Greek term referring to the family line or the home, distinct from the polis, the public sphere. Women’s roles were traditionally confined to the oikos but the oldest male was considered the head of the family unit.
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Stevens, L. (2022). Performing Reproduction in an Age of Overproduction: Environmental Installations by Ai Hasegawa. In: Halferty, J.P., Leeney, C. (eds) Analysing Gender in Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85574-1_14
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