Fertile Language Practices

(In)fertile (M)other (2024)
Computational Constructions (as video)

With a research practice interested in the languages and narratives around knowledges of female (in)fertility, I have been particularly drawn to the links between written language and computer programming language, whilst thinking about the personally led online fertility forum space in both form and content. As a machined practice, reminiscent of clinical categorisation, instructions around syntax at the interface must be correctly structured to be effected: certain commands must be contained in parentheses and if something is absent, an “error” occurs. The use of these elements within written language, contrastingly, serve to extend its fluidity, punctuating reading and affecting inferred meaning around the loaded languages of (in)fertility.








It failed, I failed (2023)
Text using children’s printing press set on aged blotting paper, with computer audio

My research develops a creative feminist rethinking around the medicalised languages of Infertility by exploring encounters between (in)fertile women themselves. This piece is driven by exchanges within personally led online fertility forum spaces, exploring how a disembodied machine computer-generated voice can affect meaningful conversational speech acts that are often both referential and performative, questioning emotion through an “authoritative” machine speak, adding a mattering that demands a more careful listening.