OBSTETRISK AFDELING/ fødsel/ svangre, 2023, 15 minutes live performance, headset microphone, mesh postpartum underwear, A/V playback
In OBSTETRIC DEPARTMENT/ labour/ pregnancy
Lysholt Hansen works with appropriated text, taken
from the hospital record of the birth of her daughter,
and re-written with an intimate and poetic voice into
a performance text, where the relational and particular
subjects/bodies of the situation are written forth, as
a caring gesture of resistance against the otherwise
generalising, objectifying and alienating medical
language that the institutional voice of the hospital
speaks and makes one the subject of.
Earlier versions of OBSTETRIC DEPARTMENT/
labour/ pregnancy have been performed in The
Matrix, a live performance at Overgaden Institute
for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen (2017), in The
Matrix #2, performance for camera (2018), and in
Zira Mater Matrix, an audio-video sculpture, exhibited
at her solo exhibition “Mother Mould” in Astrid
Noack’s Atelier, Copenhagen (2020).
The performance is published in the form of in-print performance (Danish with English translation) by bastard Press, Copenhagen, 2023,