No Need to Confess is an installation initiated by Aimée Phillips and Nina Linde Läuger; in a multidisciplinary manner it aims to interweave different perspectives (historical, intimate and socio-political) on abortion and confession. In doing so, it aspires to offer a platform for practices that expose the taboos relating to abortion – being a practice that has been present throughout times. The installation combines and reworks (self)fabricated archival material from different eras that have normalized and lived out misogynistic (political, religious as well as social) structures or represent empowering practices by people with wombs. As examples: the use of the peacock flower and penny royale as abortifacients, the Angkor Wat bas relief (A.D. 1150) from Cambodia representing a massage abortion and the aesthetics of the confession booth. Part of the installation is a sound work, leaking out of the confession booth, that encloses reworked fragments of interviews conducted by Femke Stasse with people who – directly or indirectly – experienced an abortion.
The installation is an invitation to enter the layered narratives and complex relationships between image and imagination, the lived experiences of people with wombs and how abortion is submerged in repressive language and censorship.
During the opening of ‘No Need to Confess’ on the 6th of March artists Annette Rodriquez, Bel McLaughlin and Clara Saito will carry out a performance. Annette Rodriquez and Bel McLaughlin will collaborate on a performative piece that carries the working title ‘folding into each other’. In ‘folding into each other’ they will engage with the installation and work through notions of bodies, instruments, collective chanting, (re) encounters, procedures amongst more.
Clara Saito will carry out a performance titled ‘The dance of choice’: ‘When time hesitates, we take nature in our hands—parsley, a whisper, a chase. A dance of choice, of power, of play. A fountain flows, a body bathes, blood turns to rhythm, to riot, to release. In the end, a quiet moment—’Not now, my love, but one day, maybe.’ And the night moves on.’
With special thanks to Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunsten, Stichting ZAMEN, Abortion Network Amsterdam, PAKT Foundation and AVA.
