Care, Labor, Candies:

A person* sits on an ergonomic chair, wearing work clothes and looking out of the window. They administer a breast pump to their bare chest with a routine motion. The place is reminiscent of a production hall. Sun is shining through the windows. The noise from the pump fills the room. A tinge of yellow. It all starts with a drop. Another drop. Each drop counts. A milk producer at work.

In my piece Lactoland (2022), I combine my professional experience of care work with my personal one of breastfeeding. Lactoland is a fictional company and the setting for a film. It performs the revaluation of human milk. In this company, it is that the labour of reproduction – that is, milk production – is paid for. It shows the process of pumping milk in spatial isolation with its characteristic sound and then the production of candy from the laboriously extracted milk. Every drop counts. For me, this candy is a symbol of the social inequality of the female body, the utopian dissolution of which i want to make perceptible to the senses while sucking on it. I am interested in making visible an aspect of reproduction work that is still carried out exclusively by women, work that is often hidden in everyday life in designated spaces such as parent-child rooms, sanitary facilities or at home. The activity of pumping milk is and remains unpaid as a rule. However, in my view it is a job that could be shared collectively. My written work "Milchmaschine. Eine virtuelle Ästhetik des reproduzierenden Körpers" ( Milk Machine. A virtual aesthetic of the reproducing body) explores the history of breastfeeding and pumping and forms the theoretical concept of Lactoland. 

In September 2019 I gave birth to my son Nikita Yael and three months after the birth I wanted to work in my studio again. For me to be alone there for four hours in the afternoon, special preparation was needed, and I had to take all the pumping equipment with me. Because, for Nikita, pumped milk had to be ready in advance and I had to pump to relieve the pressure on my breasts. I also pumped milk during visits to the college and realised later that I hadn’t really produced anything else. I felt guilty about being in the studio or somewhere else because there were voices from outside telling me to stay at home to breastfeed for now. Pumping took a while at first because I had to practise it. But when it worked, I was relieved. I could do some research and then I had to go home again. The result of my work — my material, so to speak — was the milk I pumped in the studio.

Until the 18th century, the Middle High German term Vrouwenmilch/Frauenmilch (women’s milk) was common. That is, until it was displaced in the context of breastfeeding campaigns and hygiene writings such as the Nutrix Noverca by the so-called naturalist Carl von Linné. Frauenmilch was thus excluded from the market as an economic commodity and the word Muttermilch (mother’s milk) was invented. Muttermilch implies that only the biological mother is responsible for the nutrition of her own child, excluding the possibility of milk from others. The wet nurse system, i.e. the redistribution of the work of breastfeeding, was previously reserved for privileged women. For these privileged mothers, this created the possibility, especially in 16th/17th century Europe, to participate in social life again despite motherhood, to show themselves, to be visible. Meanwhile, the wet nurses were well-paid and could even feed their own families with their wages. But it is also known that workers, especially silk workers in Bordeaux in the 17th century, gave their children to wet nurses in more rural regions. Through the symbolic power of Muttermilch constructed by Linné and also the writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau, mothers were consequently banished indoors to the private, domestic sphere. Breastfeeding became unpaid and invisible work and was legitimised by the premise of motherly love. This created a gender differentiation with clear role assignments: the man was responsible for the outside and the woman for the inside — for the private sphere, so to speak. These gender roles are still effective today. Breast milk is still labelled in breastfeeding guides as the most natural and therefore the best. In 'Milchmaschine', I deliberately use words like Frauen*milch, Brustmilch (breast milk), Reproduktionsarbeit (reproductive work) or Milcharbeiter*in (milk worker) because I am looking for an adequate language to describe this activity that does not reproduce this gender construction.

I refer to the fact that mothers* merge into a machine at the interface with the pump, that is, they become cyborgs. When writing 'Milchmaschine', I often had the cover of Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto in mind: a woman sits at a computer keyboard and her breasts are a kind of an interface, a circuit board (motherboard), like an artificial nervous system. In this picture I imagined the breast pump. It struck me that Haraway’s theory is already a reality when I compared myself to other women who presented themselves on social media under the hashtag #pumpingmom, working on their laptops and pumping milk at the same time. The breast pump offers the possibility to leave the role of mother temporarily and to involve others in the reproductive work and thus become milk givers. In my research, I learned that all bodies with mammary gland tissue can produce milk even without a previous pregnancy. Within queer parenting concepts (ie: lesbian parents with adopted children), it is already common practice that the one who has not given birth can still manipulate the induction of the mammary glands with the help of a breast pump. In this way, it is possible for many to manage the task of reproduction together. By applying the pump, even more milk is produced than without — an excess that usually goes into the waste bin, although the milk could actually have been shared.

*The term mother is written with an * to open it up to all people with caring responsibilities.

Right now human milk is experiencing major hype, not only through the hashtag #pumpingmom but also through the research of the milk pumping industry. The milk pumping companies are very keen to emphasise the positive qualities of human milk and they fund the relevant research. My mother couldn’t breastfeed me either, which is why the experience of feeding my child was such a sensitive topic for me. The exchange with my mother made this even clearer to me. Milk — especially women’s milk — is the only bread for children at the very beginning of their lives. This is pure stress for many mothers. They are often bread bringers, but not bread winners in the financial sense. The idea of nourishment has historically taken many turns between human, maternal milk and artificial baby food, influenced by the spirit of the times and the respective state interests. This has always had an influence on the role of women. In the 1960s, there was the hype of powdered milk, and it was totally en vogue to give the children only that and not to breastfeed them oneself, which of course also made one’s own occupation possible;  at the same time, it did not go hand in hand with the liberation from housework and care. However, people were more open to raising their children with the bottle. And then there was always this alternating between own and animal milk. 'Lactoland' tries to make these issues visible so that utopia can become reality.

It all came about because I first realised my own posture when pumping milk. With my eyes lowered, I sat down and leaned further and further forward so that as much milk as possible ran. According to the pictorial motifs from art history, the symbolism of milk and the mother are two of the oldest subjects, represented in the Christian context as Maria Lactans (nursing Mary). She is hardly visible as an individual and is always depicted with a child standing over her, so to speak. I couldn’t identify with this image of Madonna, although I automatically embodied it, as the self-sacrificing mother, when I was breastfeeding and when breastfeeding itself took up so much of my time. In the antenatal classes, everything was focused on pregnancy and birth itself, but hardly on breastfeeding. The birth happened so quickly, but I wasn’t prepared for how much time and daily effort breastfeeding would take. And then I find the German word Stillen problematic as well. Stillen means breastfeeding, but at the same time being still, silent, calm as well. The hashtag #pumpingmom makes pumping in the silence time visible on social media. Women, but also trans* men can be found under this hashtag, showing many variants of pumping scenarios, mostly in the form of selfies, performing without shame. In contrast to Maria Lactans, who is always pictured with a child, the child is actually no longer present with the #pumpingmoms and the gaze is usually set offensively into the camera. However, #pumpingmoms are not really part of public life. At least not at the moment of pumping. The pictures show the rooms in which pumping takes place. These are, for example, toilet rooms, storage rooms, or one’s own car, so they are still private spaces. But the photos bear witness to the simultaneity of wage labour and milk pumping, the repetition, the leisure, the endurance and also show the milk itself.

I pour the milk into a pot. 

After the boiling process, I pour the milk, which has turned into a shiny gold mass, onto the countertop. 

I knead and roll it out several times, finally portioning it out so that it becomes individual, creamy candies. 

The transformation of human milk into candies makes human milk a sharable commodity—a commodity whose manufacture, kneading, and rolling out is evocative of manual processes transforming work into an activity, thus disengaging it from the body of the mother.

The work of breastfeeding is a temporary thing that eventually wears off as the child grows up. Often there is a backlog of milk when the child is weaned. A breast that has been trained by the pump first has to be weaned again, and that is not possible without a pump. It is emptied in ever greater intervals until at some point there is no more milk. Yes, and the leftover milk that is then no longer fed to the child is sometimes donated to milk banks in hospitals if it meets certain requirements, or it is simply disposed of. Under the hashtag #pumpingmom, you can often see overflowing freezers full of women's milk on Instagram. When I started breastfeeding and I still had too little milk, these pictures triggered me: there was just so much milk that could have been shared. It occurred to me that there could be some kind of agglomeration, like a milk lake of the many shareholders. Unfortunately, milk does not legally fall under the category of assisted reproduction. Sperm donation, surrogacy and egg donation are recognised modes of this reproduction as labour. Why not milk as well, as in the days of the wage mothers? There are a multitude of platforms where women offer their milk for sale, for babies or for athletes — all illegal. Via the BBC, I came across a case from 2017 in Cambodia: women were pumping their milk twice a day in so-called milk factories (labs) for a low wage, which was then sold for eight times the final consumer price in the USA. Demand continues to be high, and although the practice stopped after these unlawful circumstances came to light, the milk was once again banned from sale as a commodity. The uncanniness of strangers’ milk plays a significant role in the reflections on a collective practice. Accepting milk from strangers, not using one’s own milk, requires some overcoming. I felt this way, for example, when I borrowed the pump from a friend, including her surplus milk. Somehow I was disgusted by the milk. The carton is still in my freezer. But then why use animal products? Cow’s milk, according to this logic, would also be something disgusting, or rather, something abject.

There are already concepts of milk siblings and practices of communal breastfeeding: whoever has more provides for other children. It would be great if this kind of sharing could be appropriately rewarded as recognition of the hard work involved in milk production. I find it interesting to think about new exchange concepts, the exchange of human milk and its legally legitimised transfer. I think it is important to create publicity and visibility for milk as a resource. I find the model of Commoning by the political philosopher Silvia Frederici particularly exciting in this context. In organised, so-called community kitchens — Commonings — one’s own resources are consciously pooled in order to share them and thus supply the community. In addition, financial added value is also generated. I can also imagine these small forms of resource pooling for a collective and solidary practice of human dairy work. The initial disgust of stranger’s milk would perhaps dissolve. The work would be shared and for many it would be a relief. The concept of mixing different kinds of milk would dissolve the constructed boundaries between own and foreign. The mother model is not absolutely necessary; the task of reproductive work could be one of solidarity.

Here is an insight into my further artistic research:

https://artisticphd-hfkbremen.com/candidate/clara-alisch/about

By creating a candy, I realized that both nursing a baby and manufacturing a candy are handwork.  Lactoland postulates a scenario in which any person qualified to do so can pump milk and make it available to others. Producing, and particularly processing, human milk is recognized as work that creates value. The candy in this setting helps to situate oneself. Through my staging, I detach myself from the prevailing ideas, stirring up and superimposing on gender-specific norms. I have the viewers of the pumping person come so close that the work and effort expended in pumping become understandable and consumable by means of the candy.

Consuming the candy provides the common point of departure. The moment of experiencing, tasting, and trying encourages viewers to recall their own experiences and thus connect with others about them, as well as about knowledge on the topic of breastfeeding. The work is designed so that viewers comport themselves towards the topic shown, react to it, and exchange with others—situating themselves. Only then, by initiating a situation by means of the candy, does the situation develop its full potential. Situating oneself here means disclosing one’s subjectivity, and not succumbing to an alleged objectivity. It is important not only to situate oneself but just as essential to activate others. The situating encourages people to share knowledge with each other.

I offer viewers the possibility to link to their own forms of knowledge and experience and to chat about the production of human milk and its consumption. I am only able to do this because I make myself vulnerable by situating myself in my work. In my art, I work with day-to-day experiences that I gathered as a young mother* and that resemble those of countless others who share them. They concern the feeling of having to be solely responsible for nourishing one’s child, solely by means of one’s own milk.

With my work, I provide a showcase for a theme that has no place in the public sphere and yet affects everyone. When I write about a “situation,” I do so in the sense of Donna Haraway, who describes situated knowledge as patterns given back and forth, enabling a new shared narrative to arise (Haraway 1995: 73-97). To conclude with Haraway: the construction of the situation is about nothing less than a localizable, better representation of the world (ibid.: 90). The everyday view of the dichotomy between production and reproduction changes. In this way, my work makes an important contribution to making the necessity of a shared stage visible. I enable the creation of new knowledge narratives and the linking of them with each other to publicly discuss reproductive work. In this way, precarious bodies can assemble.

• Donna Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective," in: Donna Haraway, The Re-Invention of Nature: Primates, Cyborgs, and Women, translated by Helga Kelle, Frankfurt am Main/New York 1995.

Lactoland could not have been realized without the help of many.

Becoming Many

Directed, Written, and Produced by Clara Alisch

Milkworker 1: A Friend

Milkworker 2: Clara Alisch

Milkworker 3: Eszter Forgács

Director of Photography: Anastasia Zeller
Editor: Anastasia Zeller
Costume Designer: Maja Spence
Set Design: Jan Felix Hahn, Clara Alisch
Makeup: Kateryna Nigbur
Sound Mixer: Janis Fisch, Anastasia Zeller, Clara       Alisch
Sound Mastering: Janis Müller
Title Designer: Janis Fisch

This work was made possible with the support of:

Behörde für Wissenschaft und Forschung Hamburg

Der Senator für Kultur Bremen