The Wandering Womb stuttered into existence on the Remington typewriter as a ‘lyric’ for an audio work. In the research into medical histories of women going back to Aristotle and the Hippocratic corpus, I was constantly confronted with views on the female body as having a faulty part – the womb. According to these sources the womb was a beast that would leap upwards and attack other organs. The language describing this demonic wandering womb was outrageous and on the Remington I typewrote it into rhythmic verse. It became an audio work arranged and sung by Mariske Broeckmeyer which then developed into an idea of the Travelogues of the Wandering Womb. If the womb could not stay in place to procreate, then let her travel!
A second Travelogue of the Wandering Womb, Her Fantastic Encounters and Strange Utterances: To the Copper Mountains is an ongoing work that will eventually have a series of manifestations in Namaqualand, South Africa. Since travel was impossible in 2020 and 2021 the work developed vicariously both in exhibition form and as narrative in the Lost Volumes. In 2021 it was a part of the exhibition No One Would Have Believed, Netwerk Aalst. Mariske Broeckmeyer and I created a second audio work, again a quadrophonic piece, this time using both of our voices and introducing the voice of Michele Burgers. The circular bed – giving off the sweet fumes of wild plants like Mugwort, Tansy, Meadowsweet and Melilot that filled its hollow structure – was again at the centre of the installation.
Bitter Walk Wind Sung
Viatrix and the Journeywomen lead the procession back to the beach. Photos by Wannes Cré
Wind Sing
Viatrix sings the Midwife’s Herball into the Wind VIATRIX : Wen Hui Tsang. Photos by…
Taste Bitter
Great Yellow Gentian (Gentian lutea) grows in the hills of the Pyrenees. The root of…
Bitter Walk Wind Sing
The Company of Fifty carried the Midwife’s Herball out to meet the winds of the…
Bitter Walk Wind Sing
A PROCESSIONAL WORK THAT HONOURS BITTER PLANTS, FORGOTTEN MIDWIVES AND UNLICENSED FEMALE PRACTITIONERS In BITTER WALK…
Conversation between Wendy Morris and curator Pieter Boons
Conversation between Pieter Boons, curator of the Artistic Research Project, and Wendy Morris, in the…