2013-Ongoing
Kinship Care Community is an ongoing project that asks whether family can be imagined beyond reproduction and biological kinship. Each iteration begins with the ecology of the place where it develops. Through research into a threatened local species, I create performances, installations and participatory situations in which human bodies become temporary carriers for another life. The project began in New York through research into the endangered northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis). Participants with different bodies and lived experiences were invited to imagine carrying the bats in artificial wombs attached to their bodies. These parafictional acts transformed pregnancy from a private and predetermined role into a shared space for imagining interspecies kinship. Carrying becomes a way of entering a relationship with another life and coming close enough to feel responsible. As the project encounters different species, participants and habitats, its original narratives are altered by attachment, uncertainty and the need to let go. Rather than treating care as a fixed identity, Kinship Care Community approaches it as a relationship that must be practised, shared and continually renegotiated.