Interdisciplinary Conference


in Art & Science

26-28 November 2020, University of Applied Arts Vienna/Online

4. KORE, revisited
Session: Session "NSP15 / F-word"
Speakers: Irini Athanassakis

Giving life (or increasingly not) has always been and continues to be a central question and part in the“life performances” of girls and women, as it is the girls and (young) women’s bodies that have been and still are the “life-machines” of humanity. The demographic and technological realities suggest that the ancient cult of fertility, and the ancient concept of KORE, standing for female fertility and the fertility of the earth, has been challenged and changed to the collective project of population control, i.e. planned infertility and procreation control and technologies.

The new culture of infertility and/or birth control is asking for new mind sets, leaving the old culture of growth behind. The “collective performance” of planetary population control is going on with the collective purpose and necessity to stabilize and subsequently diminish the human population. 

Objects and (hi-)stories written by “poems” using data, text and images ranging from archaic and ancient art, mythologies, fairy tales, current sociological and demographic studies, hormonal and neurological information as well as science-fiction on human reproduction will sketch out different realities and fictions to come.

KORE is to be reinvented…

Irini Athanassakis

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