ABSTRACT
This chapter sets forth a manifesto for a “MATERNAL AESTH-ETHICS,” which proposes how maternal aesthetics might gesture towards ethical action through “PROVOCATION AND PRACTICE,” before presenting two case studies – Elisabeth Carlile's Hush Now My Darling (2016) and her one-to-one performance Rubatosis (2017) – which model the ideas. The chapter is inspired by Mierle Ukeles’ Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969! (1969) and is structured around two main ideas taken from Lena Šimić and Emily Underwood-Lee's “Manifesto for Maternal Performance (Art) 2016!” (2017) – specifically “Day 3c. Maternal performance must be a provocation” and “Day 2. Maternal performance relies on the other.” This chapter outlines how maternal aesthetics and maternal practice might be used in works of performance and, more specifically, suggests how the interplay between them has the potential to engage, or provoke, audiences in wider maternal practice(s). This chapter suggests how reformulations of the touch-based legacy of the maternal environment might be understood to re-emerge between performer, aesthetic, and audience in Carlile's work.
