Who was present at your birth? It’s probably safe to assume it wasn’t a crowd of random strangers gathered in an art gallery, right? Well, this won’t be the case for performance artist Marni Kotak’s baby, who’s going to be the star of a performance called “The Birth of Baby X.” That’s right – Marni is going to give birth in front of an audience, with her husband, midwife and doula on hand.
Kotak has said: “I hope that people will see that human life itself is the most profound work of art, and that therefore giving birth, the greatest expression of life, is the highest form of art.”
From Jezebel:
We’ll find out just how arty giving birth is sometime in the next five weeks, which is the expansive time frame Kotak has given as her due date. So show up any time! If you don’t happen to catch Kotak in labor, you can just watch the videos she’s made about her pregnancy.
When the time finally comes to give birth, Kotak and her husband will have a midwife and doula on hand. So she’ll be as safe in the gallery as she would be during any home birth—except how healthy is it to have a crowd of germy onlookers standing around? Also, what happens if something goes wrong and she has to go to the hospital? Will the baby still be a work of art?
And not only that – the baby will also be taking part in a performance piece called “Raising Baby X”, in which Kotak plans to “re-contextualise the everyday act of raising a child into a work of performance art”. So in other words – the span of the child’s life from birth to college will form another long-term art project.
“I believe that our most intriguing performances occur when we are not aware that we are performing,” said Kotak.
If you’ve given birth, who was there? Was it difficult to decide?