Biological Clock is an experimental inquiry into the boundaries and potential of using art as a cultural catalyst; community as an intentional imaginative reality editor; and social constructions around time as an equalizer and integrator of multi-stable identities. It is a prolonged deliberate multi-media series; culminating in a one-night queer feminist-whore insemination gangbang ritual performance in late April 2011. The premise: that with ritualistic intention and planning a sacred scenario is created specifically to foster conception and pregnancy on the potential mother’s own terms.

Since winter 2009, I have prepared myself as both a healthy and welcoming host for a new life and an intentional, curious and flexible artist. Amongst other things, I have tracked my own reproductive cycle, interviewed people in Europe and the U.S. about their personal relationships with time and fertility, and sought out potential “seminal collaborators” (sperm donors who will perform with me) and “Handmade-ins” the group of queers, whores, and artists who will deliver the genetic material, facilitate the ritual, and act as holy lovers.

My goal is to test the borders between choice and chance, art and life; and explode the perceived boundary between embodied sexuality and motherhood. I intend to attempt to get pregnant in the way that feels most holy, interesting, loving, appropriate, community-engaging and self-actualizing to me at this time: in art, unflinchingly and with pleasure.

Great thanks to my production assistant, Becca who is keeping my head, hands, heart and cunt where each should be, at their proper appointments with the pertinent people and relatively on-schedule.

If you would like to come to the conception performance ritual on April 30 as part of the Birth/Rebirth Spring Artgasm at Femina Potens Gallery, please RSVP here:
bioclockproject @ gmail.com

It takes a village to raise a queer performance art ritual conception
Please donate to the Biological Clock Project

Take the Queer Fertility Survey!
Each survey takes 5-10 minutes, and is an interactive input part of the bio clock project, inspired by the kinds of questions I’ve been asked or asked myself since the beginning of the project around time and fertility, my desire to get some anecdotal data, and an atmospheric sense of some of the current general feelings around issues of time and queer fertility, especially from people who identify as queer. I think taking surveys is fun, I’m interested in using surveying as an artistic media to gather impressions from the wider world and to also inspire further thought and conversation around topics I’m curious about. I also think that it is an inherently biased tool, and as an artist I’m interested in acknowledging and working with the bias, grasping a momentary impression or conceptual trend in a likely insular population, as opposed to fighting it in the interest of objectivity. This is also a way of working through the barrage of questions and interrogations around my means, intentions, abilities, motivations etc. that I am frequently subjected to when I let people know that I (a queer, single, sex-working, low-income, weirdo, artist) want to have a baby.
I ‘d love to hear your responses! Much thanks to my survey co-developer and wifey Irene.

Queer Fertility Survey #1: Click here to take survey
 
Queer Fertility Survey #2:Click here to take survey

Preparing for Motherhood

Preparing for Motherhood is a collaborative project between me as performer and a number of photographers from the US and Europe. The result is a collection of photos of various photographic performances inspired by actions women do/are expected to do to get prepare for pregnancy and parenting of young children. Each photographer works with me on a series of photos that capture one performance in a sequence of a parenting action, such as “Breastfeeding”, “Birthing”, “Potty Training”, etc. I twist my interpretation of the action to integrate ideas of expectations of parenting, independence, labor, body changes/shame, gender dynamics, sexuality, and fantasy. If you are a photographer who would like to work with me on this project, please email me.

*Craving

photos by Goodyn Green

*Birthing

photos by www.dirtysurface.com

*Breastfeeding

photos by Metzgerei

*Strolling

photos by Mabel Jiminez

*Potty-Training

photos by Jenny Kroftova

Come to Mama

“You are invited to witness a personal ritual performance. We are using the powerful magic of queer art and love to invite a new energy into our world. Sperm Magnet/ Wife Triangle/ Womb Walkie-Talkie/ Whore Dream Deviled eggs will be served. Another piece in the Biological Clock queer fertility series by Sadie Lune, Lula Mae Day and Irene LaTempa” A fertility ritual performance with my two wifeys specifically for the sake of inviting and welcoming the spirit of my baby into my body and asking it to pull the sperm that will create it towards my life.

The Egg

Maypole Ritual

Seed-Planting

Interview by Anna Pulley

Anna Pulley is a writer who attended the Biological Clock conception ritual and then wrote this article about it for therumpus.com.
Below is the interview in full, written on May 11, 2011, 11 days after the ritual.

AP: How soon do you find out if you’re pregnant? If you didn’t conceive, are you going to keep trying? Will there be other performances involved, during pregnancy itself, for instance?

SL: I’ll find out if I’m pregnant in a couple of weeks. I decided not to test before the end of this cycle just to spare myself further emotional rollercoasters. I’ve been longing for a child for many years so I will keep trying to conceive as long as the resources are available to me, though I hope the trying is already turning into working. It’s likely that I will continue to work with these themes artistically through my pregnancy, but I’m not yet sure if that will manifest in performances, work in other media, or both. I have some ideas incubating.

AP: You’ve been planning this for over two years. (Sidenote: I’m from Tucson, AZ. Holla!) What inspired this project? What made you decide to make such an intensely private act public?

SL: I feel really inspired by the idea of life-changing art, work that transforms the experience of either the artist, the audience (in whatever form they may take) or preferably both, for longer than the duration of the interaction between them. I feel compelled to make work that is potent and authentic and addresses whatever I am trying to come to terms with in that moment of my life. I get a lot of inspiration from the work of Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens, and Annie’s mentor, Linda Montano, and I think art that broaches love, connection and intimacy full-on is really important in the world; especially right now when cynicism seems so much easier to swallow and isolation so much more convenient. I was sitting at a diner with Guillermo Gomez Pena and a group of artists from the States an Mexico, and we were working very hard on these really intimate trust-based performance methods that create a structure for tapping into your creative intuition. The subject of Annie and Beth’s wedding project came up and I suddenly realized the the life I would like to live is one in which I try to conceive in a beautiful public performance ritual. Artistically, I felt compelled to create a space for a demonstration with my body as the point of contact between cultural ideas about personal sexuality, public entitlement to the bodies of sexworkers, and de-sexualization of motherhood. Spiritually, I wanted to stack the odds in my favor with as much energy from as many loving collaborators as possible. Also, it felt really scary, really big and really fun to think about, and I think that emotional combination is important to listen to in life and in art.

AP: What were your biggest concerns about having an audience and press involved in the ritual?

SL: As for the witnesses, I was concerned about all the things I’m usually concerned with, will they enjoy it, will it move them, how will they react to the sex, etc., though in this piece I was also thinking a lot about the fact that in some way we would all be connected and working together and hoping that most of the people would allow themselves to be really in it with me and us. I was also concerned about how much I could ask of them, as far as what they wore, brought, how many rules and provisions I could actually establish since as far as I’m concerned it was a real ritual with real magic and I wanted the witnesses to be real, willing, and present collaborators and participants. As far as press goes, it’s the piece that I feel most protective of, because metaphorically and literally it is my baby, and I also feel very protective of my collaborators. So I really only wanted press that I felt confident was sex-positive, savvy with feminism as well as radical art, and could handle the woo aspect of the whole thing without drowning in a pool of their own snark.

AP: How and why did you choose Oberon to be your potential child’s father? Was there an extensive process involved in selecting the sperm donor?

SL: The sperm process was very extensive. It’s amazing how easy it is to get sperm when you want to throw it around or be irresponsible with it, but how hard it is when you have a very intentional loving purpose for it (even if you remove all financial or legal responsibility for the donor.) Oberon is such a gift because of all the potential donors I was working with, he was the only one who I met solely through working on this project, who wanted to be a parent a with me, who would be in town during the right time frame, and who was committed to both the project and the baby from day one. There was a point where it became clear that Oberon was the organic choice, the one who was present and available and providing way more than my expectations, adding more sweetness and dedication and ease to the whole process that had when I was twelve was a requisite genetic trait for my future baby daddy.

AP: What does “queer motherhood” mean to you, and how does it differ from non-queer motherhood?

SL: In my mind queer parenting just takes various aspects of queer ideology such as critique and analysis of hegemonic values and conventions, awareness around oppressive structures of power and social justice, flexibility with a multiplicity of identities such as ethnicity and gender, and applies it to the joyful work of raising and helping explain the world to a child. It means more parents, more genders, more answers and more “I don’t know”, more accountability, more communication, more ideas about what a family is and where we put our time and energy and money and why, and obviously more glitter. It means less TV, less wasting water, less shame, and less “I’ll tell you when you’re older”. And it means a lot of love, in different shapes and sizes, from people related in heart and spirit as well as by blood.

AP: In your request for donations video, you talk about being denied a Kickstarter platform due to the sexual explicitness of the performance. Do you think funding art projects of a sexual nature are more challenging? Does the San Francisco art world censor projects considered taboo, in your experience?

SL: Yes its more difficult to fund sexually explicit art. Generally behind funding, back there somewhere there is either the government or corporations and both institutions depend on maintaining their power and are therefore notoriously sex-negative. Somehow once sex is involved, people feel uncertain of whether they can judge if something counts as art or not anymore, so they’d prefer to just skip it. San Francisco is known for raw edgy art and it still exists here, and in my opinion this is the current International hub of radical sexuality, but when you mix the two more likely than not those artists are on food stamps. Initially I intended to do this performance in Berlin, because while sex culture looks different over there, there is at least a consciousness around validating boundary-pushing art and a custom of paying performers.

AP: On your website, you talk about the boundary between sexuality and motherhood. In what ways do you feel sex/sexuality has been divorced from motherhood?

SL: I think that the term MILF pretty much sums it up. “Mom I’d like to fuck” as a special designated title implies that a MILF is an exception and in general moms are not amongst those one would like to fuck. It also presents the mothers only as a surprising potential subject to fuel others’ sexuality; the moms themselves have no desire or agency. Where’s the title for the type of person a mom might like to fuck? I know some people like that, what do we call them (besides lucky)? Our culture is still painfully schizophrenic around sexuality, and blatantly so around motherhood, where in most cases the act of sex itself brings the undoing of the person’s capacity for sexualization. The archetype of the hot mom is still more the stuff of fetish than cultural norm, despite the fact that the Graduate was made almost 50 years ago and mothers have been having enough sex for first-borns to have siblings for quite a bit longer than that. Mothers are expected to hide their sexual selves, lest they be seen as gross, unseemly or suspect, and sexually empowered women often feel the need to hide their status as mothers from other sexually open adults. People want to protect and honor their mothers but it is deep-rooted shame, sex-negativity, and misogyny that deems that respect be manifested through an enforced image of chastity. Fathers are not held to the same ideological standard, it is expected that dads get laid.

AP: The ritual itself: How much of it did you invent vs draw from other cultural/historical sources? The chanting of Om, for instance, or the guided meditation, were two aspects I noticed. The green, purple, and silver colors, etc. Did you have references to guide you in the symbolism?

SL: Both my spiritual and artistic practices are a patchwork from diverse cultures, modallities and influences. I like to pick up bits of magic all over: Buddhism, Paganism, Ancient Greek Mythology, science, astrology, intuition, and many more sources. I like noticing the similarities between modalities; and at this point I know the structure and tools of the way I often do things, I get input from witchy friends, and then it all blends together. I take elements that are meaningful or feel like they work for me, and then add details specific to the goal of the ritual or the art piece, and sew it together with humor and playfulness and my personal aesthetic style. But it all comes down to what do my collaborators and I have personal affinities for, the associations and flavors we like best; I think magic and art both work better if you make them with the ingredients that make you yourself tingle.

AP: Audience participating was highly encouraged, be it chanting, passing stones around, sharing sex stories, or engaging in sex acts themselves. Why was that important to the performance? Or was it important at all?

SL: As far as I’m concerned this event was a total intersection or spiritual ritual, art work, and physiological conception, and so the witnesses were complicit, not passive consumers or judges removed from the action of the piece. They were an extension of the action, an amplification of it. I wanted their energy, their feelings, their bodies to be part of the creation, because I feel like I have been created and shaped by so many people’s ideas and actions and influences and the people in the room are all representative somehow of those influences. I don’t want people to sit and watch me make my life or my art, I want them to help me and let me help them, to share it with me.

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From NYTimes.com: A Seedy Rivalry By OLIVIA JUDSON