GalactaBlogue

Curds Away!

2008-07-22T18:37:00.001+10:00

Pictures made from milk, using a 19th Century process it seems. Ah, such quirkiness to be had in the Land of Lacto! Check out Denise Ferris's art here.

Milk Jewels

2008-07-18T12:33:00.000+10:00

from http://www.news.com.au:

IF you thought mother's milk was just for babies, you're wrong - a group of artists has turned human milk into pieces of jewellery.

The Telegraph.co.uk reports Duende, a collective of French artists, will display pendants, necklaces and other ornaments made either partly or wholly from human milk in France later this year.

The milk is boiled with vinegar and the protein in it hardens to create a plastic that can be moulded and decorated.

Amongst the pieces to be featured in the exhibition, which will open at the La Cuisine gallery in Negrepelisse on September 13, will be a necklace with a pendant of a baby's head made from the human milk.

Non-Maternal Writers Of 'The Maternal'

2008-07-18T12:06:00.003+10:00

Yes, I know I haven't posted here in a long time- too busy writing up the tome!

Was wondering recently if anyone knows any people writing on maternity, and/ or lactation, that is NOT a mother or parent. Obviously I write about breast milk without ever having spawned, and I have a Northern friend who is childless and writing poetry about maternal sexuality, and another non-breeding mate here in WA looking and reproductive technologies and such for her MA... all of us dykes, or thereabouts. Sans infant, and in most cases not desiring one. Just curious.

Milk And Tears

2008-04-24T19:59:00.002+10:00

Last week I heard news that the girlfriend of an old friend had died. I haven't seen him in a long time, and never met her that I can think of, but a few nights later I dreamed that I was breastfeeding him... It was a sweet, sweet dream, very tender and caring and soft...

Curdle- Pictures Of Y

2008-04-23T13:10:00.005+10:00

And here are some pictures I took during Y's show, courtesy of Y. Suddenly I am back in that space...

Curdle- Psychedelic Milk

2008-04-22T17:50:00.004+10:00

As featured in the film Matt made with Frank.

CURDLE- THE END AND ESCAPE 19/04/08

2008-04-22T16:20:00.001+10:00

Am almost sufficiently recovered to do the final update of the Curdle experience. Took more out of me than I thought…

Well, got up early to await the arrival of various pieces of art and person. Holly and Liam were first to arrive, bearing poems and fetching food. Then Leesa with the photos, Matt with DVD, Alexis with music, and Sam with wicked intentions and alcohol swabs. When all put together, the tally of pieces to experience at CurdleD on Saturday night:

* Film that I did with Matt and Frank and the Nymphettes, turned into a late-night ‘Let me tell your milky fortune’ advertisement. Hilarious.

* Five pictures from the photo shoot with Leesa, of milk jugs and Moo-Zoo’s reincarnation.

* Slideshow of all the photos Emmy took of the piercings I did with Tam.

* Projection of the Hera film I did last year with MimInBoots.

* Mixed CD of milk songs put together by Alexis, including My Milkshake, No Milk Today and some Spanish kids thing about a giant cow or something.

* Poetry reading by Goatman, aka Liam. Bloody good, and funny, and insightful for one so young and precocious. Yes, we are ALL MOTHERSUCKERS!

* Philosophical rantings from behind a screen by the ridiculous Necrotitties, appearing for one night only as NecroMilkies- all French and fluid.

* Poem by Holly, written out and hung on the way with her breast print.

* Instructions for how to make invisible ink from milk, written in my own breastmilk and ironed until it showed up.

* Four photos by Sam K of my Divine Bovine show last year at Hellfire.

* Collection of nursing pads, written on by visitors both before and during the night.

* Milky Memories book, containing thoughts from visitors.

And then there was the cupping performance. Ah, the cupping! Set up the scene in the back room, two chairs, blacked out walls and window and set up the surveillance cameras so that it showed in black and white on two monitors outside in the main gallery. In essence, Sam made five cuts on my chest and tummy with a needle, then cupped each of them as she went along. They filled up with blood quite admirably, and it was hard to stay still. Cupping is an odd sensation, a slow pinch that gradually feels like a bruise. Delicious! And all I can do keep from dropping completely into some sort of happy lala land, but know I have to keep on going when I look down and see the cups filling up with blood. Soon it is crunch-time, the moment I have been waiting for. Will milk fill the cups when we place them on my nipples? First one goes on, doesn’t clamp hard enough, no milk. Second one- ‘we have milk!’. Wooohoooo! Re-do the first one, and this time it works, so that I have fulfilled my dream of having blood and milk cups… it looks and feel wonderful, I get Sam to help me to my feet and I wander into the audience to cheers and more photographs. Back into the room, with a slurp the cups come off leaving congealed blood-jelly and drying milk…

Then happy-high Zoo stumbles back into the crowd for drinking and schmoozing and eating sugary cakes and cavorting, before closing up the gallery and heading into Phoenix for a quick dance and an early-ish night. Nice to be outside again, but somehow I miss being CurdleD.

CURDLE JOURNAL 18/04/08

2008-04-22T14:56:00.004+10:00

The penultimate day went quietly, with little company or activity. Was sleepy and uninspired, not in a sad way just a gentle surrender to a zombie-like state. Made better by a visit from Greg to set up all the AV stuff that I can't get my head around, and then a visit from Reid who did some sketching and photos and helped me arrange the space for closing night. Can't say much else happened really, a call from my Perth groupie and a relatively early night.

CURDLE- Moving Images

2008-04-22T12:17:00.002+10:00

Projection of the short film I made with MimInBoots, with my first significant amount of milk from Curdle (Day Three).

Curdle- Wee Small Hours With Y

2008-04-22T11:38:00.000+10:00

Well, its been a few days since Y performed for me, and I’m still not sure that I can do it justice in a blog post. Have described it to a few people verbally and just tend to rant and jump up and down with a possessed/enraptured look on my face! Will try to convey the joy and beauty of it here all the same:

Thursday night I go to sleep in my loft, knowing that I will be woken soon. The phone rings at 4am, and Y tells me he is outside. I let him in, and am instructed not to look whilst he sets up. ‘Okay.’I open my eyes, and he is lying on a rug, covered in gunmetal grey blankets. There is a tube, maybe a couple of metres long, leading from his head to a glass container of milk. The liquid is being drawn through this tube ever so slowly. He moves slightly, starts to uncover himself. Wraps the tubing around his neck like an umbilical cord, still sucking. Shifts about, uncovering more and more, sucking in milk all the time, until it is all fur and tattoo and white jocks and white liquid. Its infantile somehow, or perhaps embryonic, but something unsettling and animal, a bearded baby, a hairy cyborg floating in a sky-floor-cell, something not quite right. It is also really hard to watch. If I saw this in another space, with an audience, and could wander about and leave at will it would still make me uncomfortable. Being trapped in a small space alone, with only the sounds of sucking and breathing and shifting, nobody to connect with, a performer with closed eyes, no other witnesses…it requireds a lot of effort to keep watching! I am allowed to take photos, but only 5, so I don’t even have a camera to hide behind or mediate my experience through for most of it- I just have to feel it. At some point I cry to see him struggle to finish it all, and I can feel my stomach expanding in sympathetic milk-pregnancy, feel the liquid sitting and curdling within me. Finally it ends when the milk runs out, and we exchange small talk (as much as I can talk- I am in shock) and he leaves me to return to my bed.

CURDLE- Darklings Journal

2008-04-21T10:22:00.004+10:00

Dearest Darkling has posted a review of our piercing scene for Curdle on her journal. Looking forward to many more artistic endeavours with this one, as always.

CURDLE- Beatie's Blog

2008-04-21T02:10:00.002+10:00

A certain Beatie has blogged about the final night of Curdle, in fabulous detail. And I've added my comments, and you can see it all right here. Bravo! I'm all flattered and giddy that its all gotten so much attention!

Well And Truly CurdleD

2008-04-20T16:04:00.002+10:00

Will update blog properly soon, but daresay all in all it was a rather successful event! Thankyou to all who attended, assisted, plied me with food and alcohol, kept me company, made art with me, rang me up to check in, performed... it was a truly collaborative effort. Bless you all!

CurldeD Is At 6pm, Saturday 19th

2008-04-18T10:54:00.002+10:00

Appranently forgot to mention the start time in all the promos. Oops!

CURDLE JOURNAL 17/04/08

2008-04-18T10:50:00.000+10:00

Thursday 17th April

Not long to go now- and what a day. Washed, porridged, dressed, read, updated this, watched telly and had a cup of tea before 11. My human interaction started just before opening with a young poet at my door, here to read me some of his work and talk about his closing night CURDLE piece. A few minutes after he arrives Greg wanders in with his partner and 11 week-old baby. He announces that we will be greeted shortly by their sort of parenting club, a bunch of mothers and others with their mostly 3 month-old-ish kiddies. It is weird when they arrive, to say the least. They are all quite straight, obviously, and seem to be mostly 20-something white middle-class mummies. They are polite, and mostly friendly enough, but on the whole appear bewildered by the art, the concept and the overall situation. We chat about milk production, how to increase supply, herbs and drugs and how much milk we get at each sitting, and it all goes reasonably well until I start telling them about my PhD, and raise the topic of adult nursing (among wet nursing, cross nursing etc) and it all turns a little odd. Saved by a phone call, and they leave soon after. Can’t help but wonder about their chat in the coffee shop! Feeling weird about this motherhood business—so much of what I am playing with concerns the maternal somehow. Obviously! Its unsettling, somehow. I know I am far more comfortable in the world I live in. Do parents really weigh their kids all the time and obsess about how many times they feel each day, where they can weigh them when the baby centre is shut and whether their lactation consult approves of nipple shields? I can’t help but think I would be inclined just to feed it when it wanted to be fed, let it sleep when it wanted to sleep, and unless it was seriously losing weight just let it get on with growing at its own rate. But heck, I don’t have a kid so who knows how I would react at the end of the day?

L stays and we chat art and poetry for a while, before B comes in for a coffee and a turn in the rocker dressed as Little Miss Muffet. Joined by C and M, a lovely couple of mates who turn up with fantastic cheeses and fruit bread. Yummy! People keep bringing me such fabulous food! We stuff ourselves stupid, and talk about what’s been happening. They all leave bar L, and we go back to listening to his IPod and working out performance stuff. I wonder how my stomach with ever recover from its recent fatty, sugary, salty adventures, but hope that once I get out of here and back on the dancefloor and fresh vegies I won’t feel quite so blobby and unenergetic.

Sometime later a new pal from QLD, H, turns up to talk maternal sexuality, bringing another newly acquired mate T with her. L leaves sometime amongst all this, and then Matt and his filming friend F arrive to continue yesterday’s shoot. Cake Lady appears in the midst of it all, hanging around just long enough to spread some sunshine and do ‘the milk colour experiment’. I dress up as some sort of oracle-type figure, and we (easily) rope H and F into playing nymphette-type assistants. I am poised over a big round bowl full of milk, lactating into it while flanked and adored and helped by the others. It is good silly fun, though daresay my milk production was a little less than I could desire (still not without its odd squirty moment of joy). Think it all worked well, and will be interesting to see the end product on Saturday. Suddenly realise that F is the flatmate of This Charming Man, which makes me laugh until we go outside, I start to wave them all goodbye and we discover T’s car has been towed away (which causes a minor panic- somehow she is calmer about it than the rest of us). Then they are gone.

Quick breather, and then Biffo’s alter ego turns up with some beers and we just laze about shooting the breeze. E drops in with a disc of the piercing pix from the other night, which are totally brilliant (of course, she is a brilliant photographer). Phew! Crash for an hour or two, watch some mindless telly, read for a bit, and wait for the last couple of visitors of the evening. Tomorrow is the second last day, with much to organise for closing night and no doubt more visitors, and I want to get some more academic stuff done before I leave the space. Time for another coffee I guess… Will worry about assessing the work, and the value of this experiment, until I am out and have had some time to debrief and ponder.

Oh, and tonight is the night of Y’s secretive performance. He is coming in the wee small hours, to hand me a camera and give me a one on one show, then disappear. It’s like waiting for Santa, and I don’t know whether to sleep or just stay up until he comes. Maybe I will just doze in the chair in front of the TV.

Update: Y called me at 4am to say he was outside. Needless to say his gift was exquisite, and inspiring, and made me cry with its beauty and intensity, and though I’m not sure if I can talk about what it was yet I wanted you all to know it was the perfect antidote to any doubts I had about what I am doing here. All of this is so that one day I might, just might, after many years of experimenting and performing around and trying out new techniques, of treading the boards and pulling all-nighters, of locking myself in my garret and becoming a hermit, if I summon up all my discipline and my talent, I might produce something similar. I am blessed with such an array of muses and mentors, collaborators and support crew, moral support and drinking buddies, that with a spark of imagination and determination from great things might happen.
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CURDLE JOURNAL 16/04/08

2008-04-18T10:47:00.000+10:00

Wednesday 16th April.

Well over the hump and into the home stretch, and daresay it seems a little weird. Still producing minimal milk but maximum milky art, and getting a lot of writing and reading and musing and note-making done, so… think it has all been worthwhile. Not that I will probably comprehend it all until it is over. Today was rather quiet, blogged a bit, pumped some, had a visit from a friend with her baby (bringing me very yummy homemade pear and banana bread), and Greg who runs the gallery. Collective Matt came in and we played around more with milk and food colouring and detergent, filming it this time and making plans for similar fun tomorrow. Y turned up for a chat, bringing me still-warm pumpkin soup he’d just made, with excellent fancypants bread rolls and yoghurt. Then to top off the gastronomic delights, Madame came in to visit and bought us all manner of goodness from the Mediterranean chicken shop a few doors down from the gallery. Have started writing more on my PhD today, and typing out notes and whatnot again, and feel in a somewhat academic headspace. It’s a good thing. Tomorrow brings some filming, possibly a visit from M-Bear with some cling wrap, a woman from QLD stopping by to hang out and talk maternal sexuality, a chat with a boy who will be doing some milky slam poetry on the closing night, and hopefully some more writing. Now, back to my books…

CURDLE JOURNAL 15/04/08

2008-04-16T10:50:00.001+10:00

Morning…

Day Six. Pump when I first wake, and get much more than I was anticipating! Yay! Then a big sharp pain under my right nipple when I finish, and so I hand express some more until it stops. Presumably this is a good sign? More tingly, more tenderness, more milk?

So far my days have been filled with visitors, food and reading some of the books I brought in with me, making notes and trying to get some writing done. Today it seems I cannot comprehend or recall what I read. Perhaps I am not up to ‘sensible’ texts about breastfeeding and feminism? Might be time to write again!

Speaking of which, I do believe I promised to write a description of the space, in lieu of the photos I cannot seem to post at the moment:

It is a small gallery, an old photographic studio from what we can gather. You enter through a doorway I have draped with an old baby’s cradle cover, cream netting and lace, and a blue fringing curtain. To your right is a magnificent bay window that is framed by an ornate black wooden archway. I have blacked out the window and pinned up long cream lace curtains. The floor here I covered the floor in white fur, setting up the rocking chair in the centre. White fur wrap sits on one arm, a big black spider on the other (Miss Muffet?). To one side is a blue milk crate, white christening gown and bonnet hanging from it. On top of the crate is the electric pump, also blue. On the nearby white wall I have projected a short film that I did last year with MimInBoots, in which I play a sort of Hera character, pearl-beaded nipple tassels and enormous black wig, chewing up and spitting out lychees and cachous into a bowl, dribbling milk over my breasts, licking rice pudding from the floor… It was supposed to be in colour it seems, but the way she has rendered and filtered it make it simply stunning in black and white. It looks like an old silent film, scratchy and disjointed and a fascinating glimpse at another time and place. I’m very impressed with our work, hers in particular! In the far corner, facing the doorway, I am set up in an old blue armchair, with a lace-covered milk crate to one side, a small TV and piles of books and notepads next to me. A cow mask hangs on another wall, alongside black and white photos of the Hellfire show in which I wore it—my very first lactation show. Next to these pix is an array of breastfeeding art postcards, and instructions on how to interact with the installation. In front of this is a small wooden stand, covered in a lace cloth, with the Milky Memories book and a selection of pens. There is a box of nursing pads on the floor, and above these the finished products are stuck to the wall. To one side is a lightbox, unused as yet (though there are plans for it)and covered with white silky fabric. Next to this the bar, with the outfits I am wearing during the installation hanging in front of it. At the back half of the room I have pinned up silky white fabric, and wrapped blue spotted net around the beams. It is extraordinarily soft and girly overall, and all of my costumes are the same- diamantes, pearls, lace, beige, blue, white, cream, brown fur, sequins, silver glitter… Why? These are the colours I associate with milk, the blue of the Madonna, the pale blue tint and various whites of breast milk, blue and white milk cartons, blue makes white more white… as for the softness and femininity? I really don’t know the reason. I just knew that I didn’t want any sharp edges, wanted it to be soothing and safe and quiet. Maternal? Perhaps. I want bare feet and gowns and rock-a-bye-maybe. I needed to be surrounded by this in order to do this, and I don’t know what will happen when I first pull on a leather harness again or polish my boots. I feel like a marshmallow toasted at the hearth, slowly oozing inside yet crunch enough on the exterior to still require the use of teeth.

So far, this is all that the public see. There is a small room at the back that I am currently using for storing props and costumes, that will be used as part of the final night performance. (More on this later.) Above this room is a mezzanine where I sleep on an air mattress. Its warm and cosy and someone has written poems on the walls and drawn strange creatures on the ceiling. So far I have been the only one up there, which is somewhat annoying as it is the perfect place to snuggle and giggle and act like kids on a camping trip. Any takers?

I have realised that I am avoiding pumping whilst the gallery is open if I do not have a friend with me, which is again against the idea of the project but… there is an old guy from a few shops away who drops in from time to time, and he is slightly sleazy and perves at the video and tells me it (and therefore the actor, me) is sexy and I really don’t want to have to explain what I am doing to him or have him watching me intently whilst I do it. I don’t want to be the talk of the town like that. This is a suburban shopping strip, and it is full of tool shops and therefore men, and I do not feel safe exposing a breast to pump without back-up. I get enough looks when I lift the shutters each morning, enough curious-but-not-in-a-good-way stares from the passing blokes and old women. Is this what it is like to breastfeed? If I was in a place where I could believe people would understand the act*, or at least would accept and comprehend it as some sort of ‘statement’, then I would feel more secure about it. It is much to do with the lack of baby too, there is no justification for this semi-public display. This is not the way I wanted it to be, I feel threatened and uneasy and… well, I knew this would teach me things!

Later…

Seems that I was justified in not wanting to pump whilst here on my own, indeed, am stopping doing it when the gallery is ‘open’ altogether- people can knock on the door if I have closed it to pump and I will decide whether to let them in, or they can request it and I’ll see what I think of them. I don’t feel safe. Hadn’t had anyone in here all day, and around 3pm a man came in. One of those strange sort of guys that looks like he would collect Lost In Space trading cards and live with his mother. Coke-bottle glasses, with really big frames, hair just that bit too long, bad cord pants, speaks slowly in a monotone. He had come to check out the gallery, as he often does it seems, and was looking kind of bewildered so I explained the project to him. Stupid move. Creepy dude: ‘Wow, I didn’t realise anyone could do that’. Me ‘Yeah, well, it’s a form of body modification, endurance piece blah blah blah’. ‘So, does it turn you on?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then its just like going to the toilet’. ‘Well, not quite. Would you like to write something in the visitors’ book?’.

He sits and takes a pen and starts to write. I don’t bother checking what he is written. A little later a dear friend I have not seen in ever so long comes in to sketch me pumping (so that she can paint my pumping portrait later) and I show her around and give her the book to look at. As I flip through it, I notice his first entry- ‘RAD FEMS SUCK.’ Then I come across his other message- ‘I HATE Anything coming out of a woman body. That must mean milk. Thanks for that. No more choc Moves**. W [indecipherable].’ Charming, although maybe being called a FEM was a compliment? Must be all the lace. Interestingly, we decided that the latter comment could be interpreted as deeply entrenched self-loathing, as unless he really was born from a pod, chances are good that he was once something ‘coming out of a woman body.’

Sketching friend leaves, and have a small break until the next crew of artistes arrives. I had no idea what they had planned for me, as often F’s work is piercing-cutting-ropes-and-ouchiness, and her willing accomplice A is of that ilk-- so I was slightly nervous. Of course, most of my mates also have a highly developed silly side and arrived armed with no more than two tubes of paint- one iridescent white and the other a nice medium blue. They paint milk jugs on my torso, and I milk drops into them whilst F takes photos. Hilarious! Then it all turns really silly when we realise that I have my cow mask here, and we could paint me up like a cow and have my pose being milked into a bucket by A the farm-boy. Silly, but rather effective, and as already discovered at the Hellfire gig last year, I do make rather a divine bovine. Much stout and tomfoolery then stumble up to bed. Nice night.

* Funnily enough, one of the friend’s in here last night works at a large public art gallery. Recently there was a big group of parents and children visiting, and a woman sat on one of the benches in the middle of the room to feed. It seems people did not know where to look, and there was much forced smiling in her direction ‘we know we are supposed to support this to be politically correct’ and a sudden burst of intensity in the viewing of the art on the walls ‘oh, I was so busy looking at the ART that I didn’t even notice that child’s mouth on your tit’. I was surprised, but then I thought that even after all of my research and writing I have not much idea of where to look either. I have only ever had one personal friend breastfeed in front of me, and public sightings are rare, and frankly I am not used to being confronted with it. Sure, I don’t squirm or walk away when I am, but there’s still a split second that I stop and think ‘just how am I supposed to look at this?’. Part of this is to do with the fact that I am conscious of looking quite ‘queer’, and aware that my gaze may be interpreted differently to that of a ‘hetero-looking’ person.

**Presumably meaning chocolate Moove, a flavoured milk drink.

CURDLE JOURNAL 14/04/08

2008-04-16T10:49:00.001+10:00

Have all but given up on the idea of pumping through the night, or trying to do more than three or four a day. Contrary to popular understanding and logic, my body does NOT produce more milk with more pumps, indeed, if I leave it for six hours instead of four I get enough to actually cover the bottom of the bottle, or close to, and my breasts ache considerably less. I feel bad about abandoning the 4-hourly plan after only 3 days of it, but feel it smarter to go with what seems to be working! And I am exhausted enough, presumably from lack of sunshine and fresh air and a rise in hormone swings and too much chocolate and not a lot of exercise and thinking so much and reading excessively.

Start Day Five with a quick trip to ‘the outside’ to update this blog and attend to emails-- as you know there is no internet here. Against my rules to leave the space, but blogging is a part of the project and I do have people out there in cyberspace wanting updates, so that I am forced to cross the road and use the internet services of the computer store there every couple of days. Then a visit from a photographer from the Glebe, who has me sit in the rocking chair pointing the electric pump like a pistol. NO idea what it looks like, but we have a chat about his new baby and what I am doing this project for and he seems happy with the pix. (Finally get interviewed by the reporter at 5pm, who asks SO many questions! Was anticipating a quick ten-minute ‘who, what, where, when’ with not much ‘how’ or ‘why’, but it ended up rather in-depth indeed. Hopefully I am not totally misrepresented, but what can one do? It’s a fine line to tread. She did seem genuinely interested, and as it’s a local paper and not some total scumbags like SMH or Telegraph it may well be okay.)

After the photos my darling friend and mentor Y comes around with moon-cakes and poetry. We chat about Curdle and life in general, he takes some more pix to accompany an interview he did with me a while ago (sitting in armchair reading) and he performs a poem for me that he gave at the Best Western arts event last weekend. Then we get down to ‘business’-- he is to give me a one-on-one performance, just him and me and his photographer, one night in the wee small hours (around 4am). We make a tentative date, and I await his confirmation with eagerness. He is divine, I love his work, and some days I still cannot believe I work and engage with such extraordinary persons. I am blessed.

And the day just gets better. Watch daytime TV, eat too much, and then gradually more visitors arrive mid-afternoon. The first a girl I knew years ago in high school and churchy youth group (yes, its true). Haven’t set eyes on her in 15 years or so, and actually don’t remember her at all really, so it’s a strange ‘reunion’ but one filled with lovely exchanges about breastfeeding and the project, her own experiences of lactation and motherhood and milky lovers. Then Madame turns up with soy sauce and chocolate (bless her little cotton socks) and I am further excited by the unanticipated arrival of two delightful circus-cum-cabaret-cum-fetish-cum-burlesque performers of my more recent acquaintance. The five of us sit around drinking tea and wine and they all write amazing entries in my Memories book, of piglets and a kitten, stepmothers and adult nursing and a brilliant quote from Wicked. All but Madame leave, and then M-Bear arrives with beer and a lamington. I start on the stout, it all gets a bit silly, and suddenly M-B is wearing the christening bonnet, my white negligee and matching lace housecoat, looking like a giant bearded baby. I change into my ‘Madonna’ outfit of shiny blue dress and veil, and sit in the rocker with him on my lap clutching a longneck of beer in a brown paper bag. Madame takes some silly shots of him being burped by me, we get some dinner and then suddenly everyone is gone and I am pumping again before bed. A very pleasant bedtime phone conversation from a playmate far away and I doze off to happily dream nonsense all night.

CURDLE JOURNAL 13/04/08

2008-04-16T10:48:00.001+10:00

Start Day Four with a morning shoot for G, who is doing a film-making course at COFA. She turns up with piles of Iced VoVos and lollies and fetches us ‘real’ coffee- a nice change after days of instant! Then she fusses about with lights and scenic and we get to shooting. Essentially this part is just me sitting in the rocking chair, hand-expressing. Made sure not to pump overnight in an attempt to build up the milk supply somewhat, and it seems to have worked because I can squeeze drops from my left breast, usually the shy one that produces little milk, for around half an hour. Of course, this means that my right breast, diva that zie is and usually the exuberant one willing to spray and squirt at the sign of a camera, clams up almost entirely and we are struggling to get more than half a dozen drops from hir. I lick the drops from my breast, squeeze them into a glass of milk, put a fake moustache on my nipple and squeeze milk onto it, play around until G has enough footage.

Then the Bears arrive, bringing me a chocolate mint thickshake that I can barely suck through the straw. The first three hang around for an hour or so, sign a nursing pad each and write in my book and chat milk. One sits in the rocker and tries the electric pump but unfortunately he stops before I can snap a photo-- though I can understand his camera-shyness somewhat. They leave, and two other furry boys arrive with a packet of Tim Tams (so much chocolate!). These ones are more serious, a bit older, and spontaneously raise all manner of milky facts and suggestions, from prostate milking to transgender issues to wondering if I had considered the cyborg aspect of induced lactation. It was a joy to have all of them here, all of them.

Close the gallery and have a little nap in preparation for the big piercing scene set for the evening. Photographer E and stylist and general helping hand G arrive, shortly followed by D, the pushy pointy princess of pleasure and pain. After we muse over costumes, eventually settling on nursing bra, white and blue petticoat-style dress, long blonde wig, blue eye shadow and pale pink lipstick, and scenarios we get down to work. We have previously discussed piercing me and then tying me to the rocker from the needles, and this is the plan we go ahead with—plus some extras. First D places 8 needles in my left breast, in a semi-circle around the top of my nipple, and ties my manual pump (wearing my friend’s christening bonnet) to them with pale pink wool. She then piercing my arms, tying them to the chair and the left one to the pump, so that I have no choice but to cradle it’s ‘head’. Then four needles in my thighs, again tied with wool so that I stay prim and proper, demurely seated. The breast ones are easy to take, like a knife through butter, but the skin on my limns feels tough and they hurt considerably! Only three needles to go, and these are in my face. One horizontally above my left eyebrow, and one in each cheek. Having lots of facial piercings, both permanent and temporary, I am not too concerned but still they are rather ouchy and as I type this the points recollect the experience and ache. A pink baby’s dummy (pacifier) is placed in my mouth, and tied to the cheek needles, and then the eyebrow piercing is tied to the pump so that I am forced to gaze down upon it. Forced domesticity, of a fashion. E takes a lot of pix of the process and result, there is a lot of laughter, and I am set free to bleed and mop up and recover. When everyone leaves I pump and crawl into bed, too exhausted to study or write…

CURDLE JOURNAL 12/04/08 continued

2008-04-16T10:44:00.000+10:00

…11pm

Feeling a bit better, more alert than last few days, and on less coffee, though still had to have a little sleep as soon as the gallery closed. Couple of mates supposed to drop in but didn’t make it, but did make visiting dates for next week, and some art dates, and had a few other folk drop by to hang out. Even had two people who DIDN’T already know about it come in, first one just read the blurb and looked at me and smile before wandering out, but the second one was a lovely lady who works for another gallery and said she’d tell her ‘experimental’ mates about it and see if they want to come to the closing next week.

Still getting sod-all milk, and have pumped four times today already (just about to do one before bed). Really don’t know why- drinking the tea, lots of water, pumping more than ever…did cover half the bottom of the bottle before, which is more than it has been so far but still rather disappointing after over two weeks of (partial to begin with) pumping. And at the end of the day I am really quite itchy all over my face and neck, and my tummy a little weird, which I am suspecting is maybe the milk-thistle tea? Whatever is causing it, it’s a tad frustrating and irritating. Other changes? My breasts are shifting shape it seems, with more and more of them trying to sneak under my armpits (though they are quite impressive when squished together in my nursing bra). My nipples hurt when they even sense the pump coming near, tight and almost stinging, and my tits itch on the inside. And I am getting the odd let-down pang of sharp pain, but not much to show for all of this. Arrrrrgh! Body! Do what I am asking you to do! Please! Do I need to nag? Cajole? Drink more stout? Meditate? Seduce? Beg? Get more sleep?

Recalled a snippet of a dream today, but not which sleep it came from. I had a big glass cylinder, beaker-like, and it was full of milk from different women. But it didn’t look like milk, it was yellowy-brown and crumbly, chalky, powdered, and I was not looking forward to consuming it at all. But I had said that I would, to make some point or another about the wonders of milk, and so I went ahead. I mixed it with water, and it became pure white frothy milk, with possibly a hint of vanilla milkshake about it, and whilst I struggled still with the volume the task was not unpleasant. Gee whiz, wonder what THAT was about then? Filming tomorrow, and then photo shoot, so should pump and head to bed but this is the first time I’ve had in hours to enter stuff into EndNote and generally process the day. Part of me wishes I was out clubbing like any normal weekend, but I know I have to follow this through for better or worse, tedium or transformation. G’nite.

CurdleD- Invitation

2008-04-16T10:39:00.001+10:00

CURDLED -INVITATION

By the blistered nipples of the Virgin you are instructed to get thyselves
prepared to be CURDLED at the closing night performance and party for Zoo’s latest and greatest lactation installation!

Make your merry Milky Way to Don’t Look Gallery on Saturday the 19th of April 2008. Marvel at the magnificent manifestations of ten days of mammary manipulation! Poetry, prose and philosophy performed by the magical majesty of moistness, Necrotitties! Fluxing fluid filmic fun from a dazzling duo of dampened damsels! A slippery slideshow sideshow of pretty photographs from a glitzy galaxy of sharp yet slimy shooters! Be entranced and entertained by the Wondrous Wet! The Spectacle of the Soggy! The Mysteries of the Milk! The Licking of the Liquid!

419 New Canterbury Rd, Dulwich Hill.
Doors open 6pm, fun and games from 6:30 until they’re finished, or we are.

CURDLE PIX

2008-04-14T11:06:00.003+10:00

can't seem to post pix from this shonky computer centre across the road from the gallery, and STILL don't have wireless in the gallery so... will try to post a DESCRIPTION in next day or so and you can all visualise! or visit!

CURDLE JOURNAL 11-12/04/08

2008-04-14T11:01:00.001+10:00

Friday 11th April.

HARD night again, wake in a fright to pump for 4am, then sleep through 8am alarm… body not used to these sleep patterns yet. Get ready, open gallery, call a few people, reporter doesn’t call me and I can’t be bothered chasing so no idea whether the photographer will turn up on Monday. Not fazed as have enough publicity I think, there should be a bit of passing trade on the weekend days and have quite a few visitors and art projects planned. Acquaintance has read about CURDLE and comes to check it, then Collective Matt comes in with cow milk, red, blue and yellow food colouring and detergent. We fill two shallow dishes with milk, then place a drop of each colour in them. Slowly let detergent drizzle into the milk and… WOW! Its totally amazing! Something reacts and the milk starts to move, the odd bubble, then the colours collide, merge, form stripes and reptilian patterns, swirl and blend and separate. More colour, more experimenting with dropping detergent from above, slipping it down the sides of the dish, dotting it over the surface. Its amazingly fun and random, and we come up with all sorts of ideas to make prints and experiment further with human breast milk when mine comes in.

Speaking of which, my milk is coming in amazingly slowly. Even with fennel, milk thistle, heaps of fenugreek and water, and four-hourly pumps. Nipples really starting to hurt, and still only getting maybe 5 or 10mls each time (combined). Not sure what else to do, but body feeling pretty knackered and stressed so thinking of bringing it back to five/six-hourly pumps. Expensive hospital pump is USELESS for this purpose, so have to do most of it manually. Ouch.

And I must strange subconscious slip of the tongue, Freudian perhaps- sometime yesterday I started referring to my pumping times as ‘feeds’, as in ‘I missed my 8am feed’. WHAT has happened here? And I keep doing it without thinking, catching myself referring to the pump as if it were a/my baby. Odd.

Aside from this, read a big chunk of Natalie Angier’s Woman: An Intimate Geography and giggled and made lots of notes, and read through another few bits and pieces. Sketch out some projects to propose, wonder if I should do a show on the last night? If so, what? Have an idea that a friend mentioned, but have to think some more about it as would be quite involved and probably quite physically intense and not sure if that would be a good thing after ten days of bugger-all sleep and mental exertion and boredom and cabin fever. Night ended when a few friends dropped over, we had some wine and beer, then a totally unexpected visit from Necrotitties and Miss Kate, before crawling up to my mezzanine and collapsing. There goes Day Two.

Saturday 12th April.

Day Three. Didn’t do middle of the night pump to see if it made any difference, which is probably just an excuse for not getting up but… when I pumped at 8am there was the same amount of milk- miniscule- anyway.

11am. Gorgeous weather, and I know that the Surry Hills festival is on today, and one of my favourite club nights tonight, and a friend’s farewell and a bbq and I’ll miss it all and suddenly I have no idea why I am doing this. Don’t feel like I am achieving anything amazing- no major work done, no big revelation, not even much milk. Just a slow creeping madness and doubt. Still, there will be more parties and clubs, there’s always more booze and dancing- of that one can be sure.

Time to reassess aims and outcomes:
Make milk. Gradual. Have achieved more previously without this tedium and ouchiness
Make art. Much planned over the next few days, so have to be patient. Having trouble conceptualising this whole project as ‘art’, as now I am doing it suddenly it seems really mundane. What does it matter where I cook my porridge or rest my weary bones or sit and pump? What gives value to any of this? Believed in it before I did it, and still do to some extent, and suspect that its just the sheer exhaustion and realisation of quite how long ten days is that is starting to send my thinking a little haywire. More coffee, more coffee, more coffee. Need someone to bring me cheese pockets or chocolate or other treats…

Woman sitting in a car outside the gallery seems in about the same state as me. So far since I have opened the shutters she has had a wild laughing conversation with someone on her mobile phone, eaten a pile of strawberries and thrown all the leaves onto the footpath, slept, stared out the window, checked her makeup in the side mirror, and started playing very loud music. Would befriend her but she does seem considerably wired.

CURDLE JOURNAL 10/04/08

2008-04-14T11:00:00.001+10:00

Thursday 10th April.

Doze past the first daytime pump time at 8am but do a bit extra at 9 or so. Give myself a sort of sponge bath in the kitchen ‘cos I can’t be arsed trying to work the camp shower yet (though will have to at some stage I imagine). Still not convinced re the electric pump, hospital grade or not it doesn’t get ANY milk out of me, whereas I get a bit with the manual one. Open gallery for first day of ‘general public access.’ In the end this consists of some people looking for the owner, a woman who did an exhibition here a while ago and had been told about my show by the owner, some people who are going to be part of the collective here, including one boy who is coming in tomorrow to do some art with me. Pump more, drink fennel tea and a heap of coffee, have some lunch, read and highlight some articles to play with later. Have had a few entries into my Milky Memories and Meanings book, some funny and some poignant. Get a phone call from a reporter for The Glebe who wants to interview me tomorrow and send a photographer on Monday so I can be talked about in next week’s local paper. Talk to and text some other folks about upcoming projects- Sunday is going to be hectic with a short film shoot and then a major piercing session. Close up the gallery and cook dinner. Realise I haven’t brought a can opener (but found one here!), or soy sauce, or salt and pepper, and that my tofu has frozen solid in the fridge (and is now RUBBER) and so my stir-fry is not one of my finest efforts. Heck, it has vegies and some nutritional value so will eat it anyway. Feeling a bit demented. And cold- should have brought more warm clothes with me. Hmm. Of all the TVs I have found in this place so far I can’t get one to work. One does have a radio function though, so I have some other voices to listen to. Think this is important for me, as even though I have had plenty of visitors and calls and texts I am sort of feeling lonely and teary already. Might just be the hormones? And I’m knackered, and the milk-making is sporadic, up and down, can’t tell what will happen from one session to the next. Hopefully this very frequent pumping routine will kick-start it in the next few days, as even though most of the ‘art’ is possible to fake/do with cow’s milk or soy milk etc, it would be nice to have enough of my own to experiment with. I feel weird, and a bit isolated. Speak to a beautiful friend from afar, but the second we hang up it seems I might have dreamed it all. Ah, back to EndNote, and maybe a doze. This is going to be HARD.

Oh, and there ISN’T a wireless connection that I can use so not sure how and when I will be able to post. Do the old ‘stick it on a USB key and then run in next door to quickly send it all and answer urgent emails’ I guess? VERY annoying, but what to do? Anyone has ANY suggestions please call me or text me with them!

CURDLE JOURNAL 09/04/08

2008-04-14T10:53:00.004+10:00

Wednesday 9th April.

Come in mid-morning with last of my stuff and get to work setting up. Cover the bay window in black cloth, hang huge lace curtain over top of that. In front lay down white fur fabric, place rocking chair there and wrap big furry spider around it (yes Miss Muffet), blue milk crate beside it with pumps set up on top. Mim-In-Boots came in with an edit of the Hera footage we shot last year- me in big wig and nipple tassels with streams of pearls, chewing up silver cachous and lychees and rice pudding, spitting into the bowl/sky, licking, dribbling, milk all over my breasts- and sets it up to screen on the wall next to the milking chair scenario. Film is in colour, but projector only wants to do black and white and it looks fabulous, really. Scratchy and decadent, lace and fake crystal and feathers. Doesn’t make a huge amount of sense, but is titty and milky and pretty…

Opening, or rather non-opening, night. Around 15 assorted folk rock up to Don’t Look to celebrate the fact that I am about to lock myself up and lactate in an art gallery until Saturday week. Buy lots of booze, and a copy of Time Out with a full page article about my show. Quite like the article, and the picture isn’t bad (me looking all serious in a butcher’s apron in a cool room full of meat-should have work my cow mask), though the caption below tells folk that I will be pumping for four or six hours AT A TIME. Seriously, if you typed that out wouldn’t it occur to you to say to yourself ‘what the? Maybe I better check that fact there? What the heck ARE hir nipples made of anyway?’. Drink too much stout (good for my milk, or so the old wives say), talk a lot of piffle, generally enjoy myself and have crawled up to sleep in the mezzanine by midnight or so. People seem to like what I have done to the space, I get asked to do an interview for the next Slit- the ‘weird science’ issue, a special someone stays for a while after the others have gone. Nice night. Wake at 4:30am freaking out about pumping, pump sleepily for a wee while then crash back to sleep. All in all not a bad start.

Pump It Up

2008-03-31T18:37:00.001+11:00

Hired myself a very pricey but very BIG and scary-looking electric breast pump, hospital grade. Will save me from RSI at least- and pumping so often for Curdle would be much more tedious without it. A bit hesitant to start her up though *g*...

MilkBrained

2008-03-27T14:58:00.002+11:00

Today is the day my brain turns to milk. Or so it seems, scatty and vague and overwhelmed by simple tasks...not unpleasant if one just accepts and goes with the flows...

Curdle- My Boundaries

2008-03-27T14:18:00.001+11:00

Now, as I have had some inquiries about what exactly Curdle will entail for the general public, I figured I should post some more specific parameters. Essentially, I am hoping to have a menu of small interactions that people can choose from, will space for people to request specific items they have conceived or record their reactions and observations and stories.

I am not interested in breast feeding people I do not know. Sorry. Outside of the fact that I find suckling to be a very intense physical, mental and emotional process that I choose to engage in within very discrete circumstances, there is also the fact that it is transferring body fluids and this always carries some potential risk (slight as it is in this case). And therefore it is something I am not prepared to engage in. End of story.

Here Comes The Rain Again

2008-03-26T15:26:00.000+11:00

I feel matronly somehow, my chest is tingling, my tits are getting bigger and harder and soon I willno doubt be able to rest entire jugs of beer (stout of course) on them. As I wrote to my supervisor:

oh, and my milk is coming in again already! not just the odd white drop from my nipple, but that fine sticky substance that seems to ooze from the whole breast, and the pains are getting stronger, and the release at pumping getting more urgently desired, woke up and pumped in the wee small hours of the morning because i just HAD to and crying every time i do it, sort of... it is AMAZING!

Curdle My Milk CALL FOR ARTISTS AND OTHER CREATIVE TYPES

2008-03-24T19:43:00.000+11:00

(Please do pass this on to anyone else you think may be interested too)

By now most of you will be aware of Curdle, the 10 day installation piece that I am creating at Don't Look Gallery in Dulwich Hill, 9th- 19th April 2008. You will also know that this work is centred around my induced lactation project, that is, I'm going to make myself milky (again). And you are all invited to come along and use my means for our mutual ends, to collaborate and work beside me to discover, uncover and recover the many meanings of milk- and quite possibly create some new ones.

Sing lullabies to my tits, use my milk as invisible ink or glaze or paint or ice or skin or soap or coffee whitener, cast my breasts, use my pump to make music, take prints from my nipples, create sculptures from my nursing pads, sketch me or paint me at work, ask my tits questions or dress them up in drag, take measurements or film or photographs… I'm game if you are.

Although the gallery will only be open 11am-5pm each day, I will be available outside of these hours by request or whimsy. If you have a particularly long piece, or one that involves a lot of input from me outside of me doing what I would already be doing, please do contact me beforehand- it would be useful for me to have some idea of who would like to do what and when.Of course, impromptu and spontaneous acts of milky mayhem and magic are much appreciated too…

Where: Don't Look Gallery
419 New Canterbury Rd, Dulwich Hill, NSW, Australia (a block back from the corner of New Canterbury Rd and Marrickville Rd)
http://www. myspace. com/dontlookgallery
Opening hours: 11am-5pm, every day for the duration of the exhibition
Opening night: Wednesday 9th April 2008 6-9pm. Small informal launch.

BIG CLOSING NIGHT: Saturday April 19th, from 6pm. This is where you will be able to see some of the work produced during the installation, have a dance and a drink and a bit of a schmooze.

Contact me:www. galactablogue. blogspot. com or freelanceprovocateur@gmail.com

Books On Boobs

2008-03-24T19:11:00.001+11:00

There is a whole site devoted to BooksOnBoobs. Check it out!

Getting Pumped

2008-03-17T19:10:00.000+11:00

Started pumping again a few days ago, part of the slow build-upf or Curdle. Ouch, but in a good way. My breasts remember, and I think they are happy about doing it all once more? Now, to start the herbs...

CURDLE- THE INSTALLATION

2008-03-11T12:46:00.002+11:00

Well, my lactation installation piece is up and running at long last! here's the 'cheat sheet', which should give you just about everything you wish to know:

Exhibition title: Curdle
Artist’s name: Zoo

Exhibition details: Don’t Look Gallery, 419 New Canterbury Rd, Dulwich Hill, NSW, Australia (a block back from the corner of New Canterbury Rd and Marrickville Rd)
http://www.myspace.com/dontlookgallery or email dontlookgallery@gmail.com
Opening hours are 11-5, every day for the duration of the exhibition
Opening night: Wednesday 9th April 2008 6-9pm. Small informal launch, statement of project intentions, few beers.
Closing night: Saturday April 19th, from 6pm. This is the big one- art created during the installation will be on display, and I will have more to say about it!
Contact details: Through the gallery or www.galactablogue.blogspot.com

What it entails: Curdle is an endurance-based installation piece, where the main activity performed is inducing lactation. This is achieved by regular pumping and the ingestion of a variety of herbs including fenugreek, fennel and milk thistle. I have done this before, but not to the same degree, so one of the main focuses will be on seeing how much milk I can produce. The first part of the piece will concentrate on the process of inducing, documenting the changes to my body and what milk I produce. The second part of the piece, once lactation has been achieved, will involve myself and other artists creating a series of milk-based pieces, by using the lactation process and the actual milk itself as inspiration, as material, or both. Already I have photographers, painters, sketchers and musicians taking part, and am open to any other suggestions for collaboration. Artists can just turn up as they wish, but for larger, longer pieces which involve serious input from me it is best to contact me and schedule a time, or at least discuss the nature of the work. The public is invited to visit at any time during opening hours, to record their responses, stories and ideas about the work in the journal provided, to ask questions, to observe the work in progress and engage with it in any respectful way they wish.

The main point of the installation: This is part of a larger body of work that has previously centered on other body fluids and processes, most usually blood and bleeding. It has its roots in body modification practice in that it is concerned with altering the form and functionality of the body. Curdle, and the entire induced lactation project I have undertaken, grapples with questions of how bodies (and more specifically, body fluids) are gendered, how they communicate with other bodies, and what happens when bodies and embodied practices are allowed to drift loose of their traditional boundaries. Clearly, lactation is traditionally the preserve of mothers and their babies (and the odd lucky husband), but breastfeeding is not the only context in which it exists or the only function it performs. Lactation and breast milk can be used to cleanse the body of toxins, to inhibit fertility, to access new ways of thinking, to gain sexual pleasure, to nurse a partner, to comfort oneself and others, to transmit cultural knowledge, to cure or to contaminate. This installation is also largely concerned with investigating milk as language, a text, and the lactating body as producer and conveyor of meaning.

For the record: This is not positioned against maternity or breastfeeding, but rather an attempt to consider what knowledges and experiences lactation and breast milk might offer when allowed to speak freely outside of patriarchal, heterosexual discourses.

Breastly Boundaries

2008-03-04T20:59:00.001+11:00

Did an interview with a dear friend today, and he was asking me all sorts of questions about how I perceived my chest, my gender, my nipples, as he writes upon such matters...

Sure he presumed I was just being vague 'cos I was a bit trashy, but it wasn't that at all, just DAMN that stuff is hard to articulate, even after having written so much and discussed so much about it all... Geez... It actually hurt to discuss it, and made me very uncomfortable, as I realised just how much of the 'bad stuff' one internalises, the 'boys don't have jiggly tits and girls don't have dangly bits' etc, despite the theorising and sitting about crapping on endlessly about it and the logical conscious 'knowing' how to deconstruct it all and being all queer and trans and whatnot... at the end of the day, its still HARD WORK to actually reconfigure the way you think of yourself, your body, your bits... Even now I am still reeling, can't quite put it into words. Just feeling unsettled, but happy that I did the interview all the same. Thanks to all those who enable me to push my boundaries, breastly and otherwise!

Nursey's Milk Chocolate

2007-11-11T21:20:00.000+11:00

Recipe For Induced Lactation

2007-10-03T13:43:00.000+10:00

Take two fully-functioning breasts.

Using a manual breast pump, stimulate at least every 5 hours, day and night, for 15 minutes each time.

Motilium. Take 2 x 10mg tablets four times a day, half an hour before meals.

Fenugreek. Take 2x 1000mg tablets four times a day. Smell like maple syrup.

Water. Consume at least 3 litres a day. Pee a lot.

Calendula cream or lanolin. Apply to nipples to alleviate dryness and soreness.

Oats. Eat as much porridge as possible.

Stout. Drink with abandon.

Fennel tea. Tastes foul so drink one pot whenever you are feeling brave.

Milk thistle tea. Drink as a reward for keeping down the fennel.

Recipes and results vary according to local custom, medical advice, and individual levels of patience and persistence.

She Spits Out Stars

2007-10-02T17:55:00.000+10:00

My mate Mimoiselle was wielding possibly the sexiest camera ever. I was Hera, with beaded milk/star nipple tassles and big hair. There were lychees and milk and silver cachous and much spitting and dribbling, spills and splashes and sucking, dancing about and twirling around... We (ie M- I have no idea how such matters work) have yet to edit it, but it should come down to three minutes of softly-saturated colour and dreamlike food porn and a galaxy created in a fishbowl...

Abstract For A Conference Paper Yet To Be Written

2007-10-02T17:44:00.000+10:00

Making Myself Milky: Exploring the Auto-Erotics of Induced Lactation

This paper will explore the auto-erotics of lactation, from inside a milky body. It is the result of my own induced lactation project, which I engaged in for a number of reasons- including a curiousity regarding the erotic potential of making myself milky.

'My breasts are full again and I reach for the gender-neutral coloured plastic sucking device and rhythmically squeeze my milk out into the bottle. Ten minutes each side, then unscrew the lid and drink my own sweet liquid. Aaaaah...

In certain ways it is similar to masturbation. Satisfying most of the time, a beautiful act of auto-eroticism and self-care, a treat to relieve horniness or the desire to be touched or boredom. There is a 'money shot', a release of tension, and milk is just as likely to glue your magazine pages together as most other bodily substances.'

I am eating myself out, seduced by my own juices. I do not need to connect with another body in order to lactate, I pump away on my own and consume my own body fluid. When the pump loses its grip on the breast, slips and lets milk flow over my chest or spray onto my thigh, this is erotic. When I sit naked and allow the milk to trickle and drip across my flesh, course
in viscous rivers all down my stomach, this is erotic. When I lie in the bath and squeeze my milk into the water, clouding it and softening my skin, this is erotic. The temperature, the taste, the smell, the buildup of tension, the erect nipple, the engorgement, the fullness to bursting point, the letting go of letdown, the impulses that take over and give you no option other than to give in- all of this is erotic. Female orgasm often causes lactating breasts to ejaculate their fluid, and increases the amount of milk produced. Oxytocin is released with each let down, and the hormone works on the uterus as well as the breast to produce contractions that may last up to 20 minutes beyond stimulation. The stickiness and the seepages and the spillages and the spurtings are sometimes self-servingly sexual.

Breast, Brain, And Brawn

2007-10-02T15:55:00.000+10:00

I have just come out of a meeting with my supervisor and feel like I could easily vomit. Shaky, disassociating, almost out of body, panicked, on the verge of tears and possibly hyperventilation. And its not a bad thing at all.

I am reminded that writing is a physical process. That I need to push my body to its limits, that this is what my work is about in so many ways, the boundaries of what the body, my body, is capable of. Since I have returned to study I have felt like I should get into training, my body is craving large plates of green vegetables and litres of water and long walks and stretches before and after each bout of writing. I get incredibly hungry when I am at my desk, which I used to ascribe to boredom or procrastination until I realised that thinking uses up more kilojoules than I had ever given it credit for. Brain and brawn are not opposing forces. I'm not just writing about the body, I am writing with the body, I am writing the body. (Geez, I probably sound like a second year cultural studies student, but its one thing to know something with your mind and another to comprehend it with your flesh.)

At the moment I have much to learn and ponder about using my practice as a research methodology, and how to incorporate this into my dissertation. When I began considering including performance pieces alongside the written work I conceptualised these almost as illustrations for the text, a way of adding clarity and explanation. Now I place these works (or more the process of creating them) as the text, and the words as the way of making sense and debate of what has been said. I'm lost, a little, as have never done anything like this before, but not only does it feel right, it feels necessary.

Facebook Sucks, But Not Milky Breasts It Seems

2007-09-11T14:58:00.001+10:00

Facebook is apparently deleting some photos of mothers breastfeeding their kids, according to this here article 'Facebook ban incurs 'lactivist' wrath'! And not only that but 'In addition to removing particular photos from the site, Facebook has permanently revoked the membership of some of the mothers.' Blah blah blah, something about them being 'obscene', blah blah blah. Grrrr!

Inducing Endurance Piece

2007-09-11T11:38:00.000+10:00

Am thinking of upping the ante with the induced lactation project, and see how far I can push it. Its hard to find time to pump and drink milk thistle and take meds on time when working on other things- always having to sneak into toilets in your lunchbreakwith your pump in your backpack is difficult and irritating to manage. So, I am proposing that I undertake the following endurance piece. Here's a very rough sketch:

Two weeks locked in a gallery space. The first week will mostly be about the inducing itself, but hopefully by the second week I will be producing enough milk to start using the time inbetween inducing acts to make other objects and interactions.

Inducing
Pump every four hours 24/7, for 30 minutes at a time.
Take maximum amounts of motillium (2 x10mg) at six-hourly intervals. Plus fenugreek tablets.
Drink one pot of fennel tea a day.
Drink one pot of milk thistle tea a day.
Consume at least 2 litres of water a day, on top of the tea intake.
Change to SuperLacto Diet, including large amounts of foods believed to be beneficial to milk production. Such as porridge, and beer.
Public can watch at any point during opening hours.

Other possible acts
Invisible Ink- see if breastmilk can be used as invisible ink. Write with quill/brush: Jeanette Winterson quote re milk-ink, Helene Cixous' 'white ink', or thoughts that have occurred to me during project. Let dry. Iron to reveal text. Record all of this in a series of black and white photographs.
Audience participation- Not sure how this will work. Can't actually feed it to them because of hygeine issues. Perhaps I can make a series of 'milk blots' to give people, or seal it in small glass capsules, like some sort of religious relic? Refer to the medieval (?) milk relics, especially the cave where folk would scrape the chalk from the walls and mix with water and claim it to be The Virgin's Milk.
Random milk art- eg Milk Graffitti (When released on last day, run around back streets and spray 'tags' on walls etc) and Milk Mirror (Using milk to trace my features on to a mirror).

Documenting
Measure and weigh breasts daily at same time. Photograph?
Make a chart of amount of milk produced.
Photograph any colour changes or unusual occurences.
Freeze milk specimens for analysis (if can find someone to analysise it): end of first week, colustrum- if produced again, end of project.
Keep diary- mood changes, physical changes etc.

Other points
Should I be costumed, or just in everyday clothes?
Will I be 'on stage' all of the time, or just at the points where I am pumping or doing something specific? Would prefer as much time as possible, want to highlight the banal moments as well as the obvioulsy interesting ones.

Requirements
Suitable gallery space- access to water, electricity, toilet, shower, space to sleep.
Futon/air mattress and blankies.
Tape measure and kitchen scales.
Comfy chair for pumping, preferably a rocking chair.
Digital camera.
Motillium, fenugreek, milk thistle and fennel teas, kettle, teapot and teacup.
Beer, porridge, and other 'milk making' foods.
Art supplies, as projects dictate eg iron and iron board, blotting paper, mirror.

Presentation
Scrapbook of journal entries, photographs, ink blots, invisible ink texts, milk chart, chart of breast measurements and weight, milk analysis reports, motillium prescriptions etc.

Flow Shows

2007-09-11T11:29:00.000+10:00

This is a series of performance pieces I sketched out for a project in my honours year, and have not done much with yet. The Isadora piece is one I will hopefully be working on with a friend from UTS, to realise it as a short film by the end of this semester. Have posted them as they originally appeared:

Performance piece for Chapter One. This piece is a bit confusing to me still. Basically it ties to permitted/ forbidden uses of milk.

A woman is seated at a writing desk, penning a letter with quill and ink. Her breasts are full, spilling over her gown and leaking milk into the inkpot. She continues to write, and we see that as her pen flows across the page the words disappear underneath her hand. In the next scene a housewife is doing the ironing with a baby at her feet when there is a knock at the door. She takes delivery of the letter, opens it and stares at the blank page. Returning to her post she places the letter on the board and runs the iron across it. The message appears, and the audience reads it: 'Please burn after reading'.

Performance piece for Chapter Two. This piece draws its inspiration from the film La Strada. In this Anthony Quinn plays a carnival strongman, with a specialty of breaking himself out of the chains that confine his chest by flexing his muscles. I will attempt to draw the correlation between the strength inherent in these two monstrous bodies- the traditionally 'strong' body and that of the lactating body. I have deliberately made both characters in the piece male, as to either show a lactating woman or a gender-swap is not only rather obvious but defeats the notion of sameness/aberrance in the one body. This will be echoed later when discussing Bakhtin's carnival's 'sacred with the profane, the lofty with the low' and so on. These links may be made more blatant in the final piece if I feel that they are not easily readable.

The setting is a freak show of the old Barnum and Bailey kind. In scene one, we are shown a strongman standing in front of his audience. His arms are behind his back and his torso bound in chains. Huffing and puffing he flexes his chest, and the links begin to break one by one until he frees himself and the chains lie ruined at his feet. We then move to the next tent, another man is bound in exactly the same predicament. His chest is bare, and his nipples poke through the restraints. Huffing and puffing, he flexes the muscles in his chest. Milk begins to pour from his breasts, and as he writhes against the chains the lubrication allows him to slip from his shackles. The chains lie on the floor, intact yet defeated.

Performance piece. This piece is based on the Isadora Duncan anecdote quoted earlier, and also the 'money shot'/climax device in pornography. It is intended to provide some cohesion and summary of the three key themes of the paper.

A woman is on stage, or perhaps not, as we cannot see the audience or surrounds. She is wearing a 'classical' tunic-type dress, and she dances slowly. The music is either Patti Smith's 'Summer Cannibals' or an African drum piece. As she dances, stains begin to appear at her breasts. The music becomes faster, her dancing more furious. The dams burst, her milk courses in rivers down the front of her dress, makes the fabric cling, forms puddles on the floor, she slips and slides but still keeps dancing until the music stops. She collapses, her resources spent. Dried up.

White Tears

2007-09-11T11:19:00.000+10:00

(From September 8th 2007)

Woke up this morning with a microdyke in my bed (not like THAT, promise) and the stirring of a hangover and the horrible realisation that I had to be at work in about half and hour. Arrgh! Microdyke left, I tried to make coffee but we had no soy milk, and no butter to put on my toast, and so I had some quick Hitachi fun to wake myself up and crawled to the bus stop looking like death with no makeup and bloodshot eyes and starving hungry and seriously lacking in caffeine.Turned up to work an hour and a half late shaky and clutching a double shot soy latte with two sugars from the new cafe on the corner. I swear, sometimes I feel just like a baby sucking on a tit when I wrap my lips around the plastic lid and fill my mouth with frothy warm milk- VERY satisfying!

Started crying on my way to the shop, and had to hide out the back and look for sympathy from my workmates for half an hour before I could face doing any real work. Couldn't work out why, was just SAD. Everything black and weird. Thought maybe was simply exhaustion and hangover and latent grief combined, but when the fog cleared later a few things occurred to me. 'Close to the water' Zoo+ breaking out adolescent skin Zoo+lumpish strangely bloated Zoo+ horny all the time Zoo might just = LACTATING HORMONALLY HAYWIRE ZOO. Tits are achy, and hurt when I pump, a real ready-to-burst feeling, but frustrating as hardly any liquid to show for it yet. Hopefully it will come soon, its like waiting for blood or orgasms or ... 'It's torture, but I'm almost there' (The Cure).

Stinking Hearts

2007-09-11T11:18:00.000+10:00

(From August 20th 2007)

Puppy me, I was loathe to lose Nathalie's scent, her muddy hair and the bitter grapes behind her ears, the tart fresh-cut cactus taste she left on my hands.

- Felicia Luna Lemus
'Like Son' (152)

It seems to be that when I am lactating I become more accutely alert to scents. Everything is heady and thick, the sickly sweet deodorants signalling the first sign of spring and the adolescent aftershaves of first year undergraduates. I can sniff out the diets of fellow commuters on my morning train, detect the contents ofplastic grocery bags and crumpled trousers. Its a state I associate with pregnancy, a hyper-sensitivity, the regular fragrances of life suddenly making the expectant one gag and swoon.

My Cups Runneth Over

2007-07-24T16:43:00.000+10:00

My breasts are heavy, they are bigger and ache and feel 'full' again. I am supposed to start pumping and popping milk-pills soon, in order to be ready for an upcoming show, but haven't started yet... I wonder what is provoking these changes? I have found myself in a few discussions around mothers and maternity lately, be it in relation to my own desires and options (or not) for pregnancy and parenting, the influence (or not) of our mothers on our personalities and peculiarities. Are my breasts responding to a desire to nurture?

And if so, who do they want to nurture? A past girlfriend of mine was adopted, and when I let her suckle from me it was often a somehow bittersweet experience, an attempt on both our parts to make up for some lack (not so much physical as emotional as a bonding and comforting. The kiss on a grazed knee, the skirts to hide behind). And a recent playmate provoked a similar inkling in me, an urge to compensate for past losses (mine to mother, zirs to be mothered). But then, with so much death and diseases around me of late, perhaps the desire is less specifically linked to an individual and more to provide solace and sustenance to my whole community? Or myself?

Whatever the cause, the response is quite intense. It HURTS. My shirtbuttons are straining to hold back my milky tides, I am getting the surging pains that signify that first wave of letdown as I type this. And the tears too are swelling up, my dams are all threatening to burst...

Milked Dry

2007-06-19T11:07:00.000+10:00

Oh dear, looks like I didn't post this piece when I wrote it. Pretend it is April 24th.

On Friday I gave a paper at the Somatechnics conference held byMacquarie University. It was a highly personal account of my inducedlactation project, part blog entry, spoken word piece, anecdote,reflection on my motivations and musing on things I had read and founduseful or provocative. It was well received, and I had many a flattering comment and mind-melting question from the brilliant andvery generous audience of academics and activists. I stumbled my way through question time, and came out with much to consider in terms ofwhere my research should be directed. Currently my thinking is that I need to read a LOT of work on body art and performance and see if I can angle my thesis in that general direction.

Then it was time to head off to do my Divine Bovine show at Hellfire.The visuals didn't work, the cling wrap didn't cling, and my left tit proved Mayhem's theory that it is indeed the shyer of my breasts by refusing to squirt milk AT ALL (just a mere dribble, even after heatpacks and threats and grovelling, though was working fine the nextday). But somehow it came together well in the end, and as my friend and collaborater Mimoiselle told me later 'Consensus says 10 out of 10hot chicks agree your performance was awesome'. Certainly I seemed to get an incredible amount of feedback from the crowd afterwards, all of it positive. For those who didn't make it, or were so bewildered by it that you can't remember what happened, here is a brief run-down:

First song was Patti Smith's 'Summer Cannibals'. Came out dressed inblack and white paper mache cow mask of my own making, blue/red/whitestriped butcher's apron, tail, half-white half-black wig with wired plaits. Walked through the crowd, then across stage on all fours,stood up on my back legs, danced about. Grabbed a meat cleaver, waved it around, threatened a sweet young audience plant with it and then lifted my apron to reveal cow-bells haging from my labia piercings and made her 'go down' on me. My cohort in crime, Hunter, resplendent in white shirt and half blue/white butcher's apron, chased me about the stage with a meat tenderiser and gave my arse a little pounding. I stripped off my apron to reveal that I was painted up like a side ofbeef with MEAT written on my left tit and CARCASS down my right thigh(thanks to Y for the artwork). Then I pulled on some black latexgloves, grabbed a scalpel and cut the word EAT across my stomach.Hunter tried to wrap me in cling wrap, but it was all too slippery and didn't work- but still got the point across I think? MeatZoo. Second song came on, The Cramps' 'Strychnine'. Ripped off cow mask to reveal face all drawn up like meat too, danced about, sprayed milk at the audience, on me, in my mouth, on glass window at back of stage, over Hunter, fed Hunter etc. To conclude the show I proceeded to grab three milk bottles, only half full, that said 'Have You Seen MooZoo? Call1800-Divine-Bovine' on one side and 'Pick'/'Your'/Poison on the other.Downed the milk, dribbling it everywhere, pouring over myself etc.Last bottle ('Poison') was full of pinky-red milk which I tipped over my head. Still had a few seconds left of song so rubbed my wounds and milk all over Hunter's lovely white shirt.

Afterwards was a complete maniac, hyped up and bouncing about wildly from one person to the next, holding thoughts for approximately 5 seconds if I was lucky, babbling and generally acting scatty in post-performance-shock. When I was finally able to articulate mythoughts a little I remarked to Nattie The Flattie that I felt like I had been flayed alive. Totally vulnerable and exposed, emotionally, physically, mentally.

This is not academia, this is not performance. This is ZOO, me, withskin and mind and nipple leaking my secrets to the world.

Powdered Milk

2007-04-28T22:57:00.000+10:00

At an exhibition opening earlier this week I struck up a conversation with one of the artists about our respective work. When I discussed my lactation project, she told me that she was breastfeeding her child at the time her own grandmother died, and as she cleaned out the matriarch's effects she came across her compact. For motivations unknown to me, she pressed the makeup to her breast, and the scent of her own milk mingled with the scent of her grandmother's face powder... As with much I have encountered this week, this story released a flood of emotions in me. The use of milk in beauty products, the lifeless powder damp with the lifegiving milk, the passing down of feminine rites and rituals...

Breasts and Chests

2007-04-04T11:48:00.000+10:00

This is from my personal blog (mildly edited), but seemed relevent to post it here somehow:

It is possibly pure coincidence that the week I started pumping and upping my dosage of milk-making drugs to increase my supply is the very same week that I collected my first chest binder from a friend. So my bewildered breasts don't know whether they are coming or going- one minute they are encouraged to grow larger and tingly and milkily exuberant with letdown, only to be squished into flat silence beneath my tshirt the next. Haven't worn the binder out in public yet, but put it on as soon as I came home the night I received it and... well... I don't know if it was physical or psychological effect, or both, but the intense pressure was quite arousing, like moderate breast bondage, and then to look down at a (relatively) flat chest... I do believe I'm going to like this a lot. Just have to remember not to fall asleep for the night in it, as rather uncomfortable the next day *ouch*.

Divine Bovine

2007-04-04T11:33:00.000+10:00

Hellfire is on April 20th at The Gaff (Oxford St, Darlinghurts), and my show should be around 1am I think. Here's what you are up for:

Calling all dairymaids and cowboys! It'll be warmer than fresh milk at April's Hellfire, as MooZoo takes the bull by the horns in herlatest incarnation as Divine Bovine. Unrefridgerated, unpasteurised,unhomogenised and unholy, this sacred cow will leave you udderlymoo-ved as she slices and suckles her way from the belly to the breast of the beast. Marinated in her own juices, slipping and sliding acrossthe slaughterhouse floor to stir your loins and plump you rump. Meat,Your Mother.

Nipple Breath

2007-03-22T17:37:00.000+11:00

Another brilliant baby's shirt from TShirthell. I don't like their politics, but damn, I LOVE their lacto fascination!

Milk'N'Cookies

2007-02-11T18:24:00.000+11:00

Rundown on last night's Velvet (fundrasier for AIDS Council of NSW) show...
Costumes: Whoretic was delightfully dressed in multiple 'flesh-toned' and pale pink sturdy foundation garments, a sweet little embroidered apron, pink headscarf, magnificently large hair, high heels with demure bows, a pink pout, an enormous pair of gold eyelashes and carried a picnic basket full of cookies. I was tastefully attired in 'flesh-toned' granny knickers, red and blue curlers, a blue headscarf, blue plastic beads, red collar, diamantes, red knee-high fishnets printed with blue and white flowers, black heels (ouch) and the piece de resistance- LactoBoobies constructed from plastic party-tits and baby bottles and attached to a red gingham apron.
Action: We wandered through the crowd offering people Milk'N'Cookies. If one accepted, and most did, Whoretic would place a cookie between her tits. Then after asking whether one preferred cow-milk or soy-juice, I would soak the cookie with it (and often much of Whoretic). Then the choice was theirs- either consume the cookies straight from her cleavage or use their fingers. Ended up very messy and sticky, but delicious!

Its An Ill Breast That Gives No Milk

2007-01-16T21:17:00.000+11:00

A combination of illness, not pumping enough (partially because my pump broke *boo*), temporarily running out of meds, and possibly all the antibiotics I've been taking left me a little lacking in the milk department of late. But now I'm feeling much better and returned to a more 'normal' routine, and my milk has come back in. Which means that my breasts are in a constant state of flux. Practically non-existant at some points, big and bouncy at others, pushing tight against my clothing or just hanging around at a loose end. Strange thing is that often this seems to have no relation to how full of milk they actually are, or how long it has been since I have pumped. Makes me more grateful than ever that I don't bother with a bra, as I would have to change it three times a day to make sure it even vaguely fitted.

Greek Letters

2006-12-11T18:16:00.000+11:00

For the Greeks the hidden life demanded invisible ink. They wrote an ordinary letter and in between the lines set out another letter, written in milk. The document looked innconet enough until one who knew better sprinkled coal-dust over it. What the letter had been no longer mattered; what mattered was the life flaring up underneath.

- Jeanette Winterson
'Sexing The Cherry (10)

Christina The Astonishing

2006-11-27T13:30:00.000+11:00

Without delay, when she turned her eyes to herself, she saw that the dry paps of her virginal breasts were dripping sweet milk against the very law of nature. Wondrous thing! Unheard of in all the centuries since the incomparable Mother of God!

Because of her piety and faith, God gave Christina sustenance. Yet he does not give her the ordinary and often polluted food of mortals, which sometimes tasted to her as though she was "swallowing the bowels of frogs and toads or the intestines of snakes". He does not shower her with a holy food such as manna. Instead, God gives her something even more holy: her own breast milk. From this, Christina's holiness becomes similar to none other than "the incomparable Mother of God!"-who, also a virgin, breast-fed the baby Jesus.

-Thomas De Cantimpre

Pumped Up Dads

2006-11-27T12:14:00.000+11:00

Not really sure what this Pumped Up Dads piece is all in aid of really- maybe just an excuse for men to play with their nipples? This is what they say about it :)

'Description: At the dadlabs we believe you should do everything in your
power to understand what she, the breastfeeding mom, is going through.
We put our beliefs to the Breast Pump 101 test. Wonder what it must feel
like to get hooked up to a breast pump? Maybe you should. Daddy Clay and
Daddy Brad perform a controlled experiment to increase their
understanding of this ordeal. Gain insight into what breastfeeding
working moms go through every day. And wonder what the hell the DadLabs
guys were thinking."

Cheese Queen

2006-11-27T11:35:00.000+11:00

I placed the milk in a bowl and when that was done the idea came to me to make a small homemade cheese out of it. The old man had given me some rennet and I stirred this into my milk and then let the mixture set. Afterwards I tied the mixture up in a small muslin bag over the sink and let it drip.

The cheese tasted mild and slightly watery. I spread it on some bread and sprinkled salt over it to bring out the flavour and when I had finished I lay down on the bed with the child beside me in her cot.

-Angelica Jacob

'Fermentaion'

A friend of a friend is apparently keen to make cheese out of human breastmilk. And I am most keen to do see what I taste like as boccocini or brie... This project would require a serious increase in production on my part though! Lately I have become lazy and only pumping once a day and taking a bare minimum of supplements- just keeping it going until I work out what to do next. Milk still there, enough to put in tea or serve in shot glasses and spray across the room at unsuspecting folk, but its more a matter of mouthfuls than cupfuls.

Strange, as I have been typing this I can feel my breast swelling and tingly and getting tighter. They say that many women experience this sensation when they hear a baby cry, but with me it seems to be either thinking of cheese (or thinking of eating myself as cheese?), that gets my breasts ready for production.

Mmmm, Maple Milk

2006-11-10T17:28:00.000+11:00

Was at one of my favourite cafes and saw 'maple coffee' on the menu. Turns out to be a regular brew witha shot of maple syrup. Tried it, thought it tasted familiar somehow, and then my companion in caffeination pointed out that this was no doubt because my milk tastes of artificial maple syrup...

Fuck The Milk

2006-10-27T15:08:00.000+10:00

This is the piece I read at Skit for Tat last night. Is long, but I had ten minutes to fill!

Fuck the milk. Give me the whisky tits. There is a girl in the bottom of my glass.

Its warmer than fresh milk in here. My breasts are sweating white juice and my cream is turning sour as my internal temperature rises. Unrefrigerated, unhomogenised, unpasteurised, unprocessed. Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet/Turning to curds and whey. My solids liquefy and I am mozzarella oozing from my areole, my liquids solidify and I am lumps of cheddar wedged fast beneath my nipples. Its warmer than fresh milk in here. My blue-veins throb with exertion and heat-stroke and its all beginning to stink.

‘When the eyes see or the lips touch that skin on the surface of milk― harmless, thin as a sheet of cigarette paper, pitiful as a nail paring― I experience a gagging sensation and, still farther down, spasms in the stomach, the belly; and all the organs shrivel up the body, provoke tears and bile, increase heartbeat, cause forehead and hands to perspire’ (Kristeva, 1982: 3).

Scene One: You are in your local supermarket one weekend, absent-mindedly cruising around the fruit and vegies section trying to remember exactly where it is you are supposed to put your bananas if you want score. You notice a young woman lurking at the end of the health food aisle, fiddling with the buttons on her shirt. You suspect she might be cruising you, so you start to suggestively finger the tubes of organic wasabi and move a little closer. There are at least three shirt buttons undone now, and your jaw drops as she brazenly removes one nipple from her bra. For a brief second the nipple stares at you and you stare back, before you break eye contact and look down nervously at your Birkenstocks. You don’t even see the baby coming, yet in the wink of an eye she’s got it securely attached to her chest. You are relieved, and leave the scene feeling all warm and fuzzy and making a mental note to call your Mum when you get home just to say hello. You suddenly realise how hungry you are- and long for a big glass Milo^{^[1]} , and maybe an ice cream, but you can’t quite fathom why.

Scene Two: You’ve moved onto the meat and seafood cabinets, trying to decide between the nice rack in front of you and the promise you made to your girlfriend to give up your carnivorous affairs. The girl behind the counter looks at you expectantly, ready to take your order. She’s pretty cute, and she ought to know what the carefully arranged lemons (and, ahem, melons) in your hand basket mean. You smile flirtatiously as you assess the whole range of carnal opportunities spread out before you. Nice dye-job underneath that hair-net, beautiful eyes, lovely large tits… but wait, what the heck is that? Nah, it can’t be. There’s a white stain spread along one side of her cleavage, starting to dry in patches and forming a slightly curdled crust on the engorged nipple pushing exuberantly against her uniform shirt. You try to convince yourself that she probably just had an accident in the dairy cabinet but you can’t quite be convinced. You’re not smiling anymore. Sure there’s something vaguely sexual happening here, but its not how you imagined it. Its all a bit icky really, not quite nice- actually, it makes you feel a bit squeamish. Maybe you don’t want that nice piece of meat after all. To paraphrase Moon Zappa^{^[2]}, ‘its like, someone else’s food’. You shuffle off distractedly only to come to standing confused in front of the feminine hygiene products. Two days later you are still drinking your coffee black.

You are who you eat. Milk-fed and fattened up for the kill, I could gobble
you all up! Swapping saliva and mama’s milk, cross-incorporation, sharing cells and selves. Spit or swallow. Dregs of mamma's special blend dribble down your chin, glazed cheeks, crackling crusts form on your suckling lips. Lap me up, swallow me in small doses. Seethe in my milk, marbled and marinated with my fat. I am eaten alive, drunk and digested. Flesh of my flesh. Nipple to mouth to skin to heart to brain to
every pound of sweet juicy young meat.

‘Now in the corner of a hallway there was a saucer of milk for the cat. “Milk is for the pussy, isn’t it?” said Simone. “Do you dare me to sit in the saucer?”

“I dare you,” I answered almost breathless.

The day was extremely hot. Simone put the saucer on a small bench, planted herself before me, and, with her eyes fixed on me, she sat down without my being able to see her burning buttocks under the skirt, dipping into the cool milk. The blood shot to my head, and I stood before her awhile, immobile and trembling, as she eyed my stiff cock bulging in my trousers. Then I lay down at her feet without her stirring, and for the first time, I saw her “pink and dark” flesh cooling in the white milk. We remained motionless, both of us equally overwhelmed…

Suddenly, she got up, and I saw the milk dripping down her thighs up to the stockings. She wiped herself evenly with a handkerchief as she stood over my head with one foot on the small bench, and I vigorously rubbed my cock through the trousers while writhing amorously on the floor. We reached orgasm at almost the same instant without even touching one another’ (Bataille Story of the Eye: 10)

Prolactin procures sobs sweet and salty, breasts and eyes both shed tears at orgasm and grief. Sitting in the warm bath, my breasts cry me a river in delight and distress. Breasts bared in mourning or lust or some intoxicating affective combination, weeping straight from the heart. Let-down and letdown. Drowning my sorrows and washing away my sins, drop by drop by drop…

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard. At the Milk Bar, my breasts offer a refreshing brew best served at body temperature. My right nipple likes a party and readily supplies schooners of Coopers Pale Ale to all and sundry, spits it out right across the room. My left nipple likes to take its time, slowly oozing thick Stout into pint glasses for a select few.

A hard-earned thirst deserves a good stiff drink. White perspiration runs rivers beneath my wife-beater. Fermentation is its own reward. A sniff of the milkmaid’s apron and she’s anybody’s. Gagging, gargling, gurgling.

Fuck the milk and give me the whisky tits.

[1] With full cream milk, of course.

[2] Frank Zappa’s Valley Girl single from the 1980s (I think).

Salty and Sweet

2006-10-24T11:46:00.000+10:00

My breasts are full again and I reach for the baby-mint gender-neutral coloured plastic sucking device and rhythmically squeeze my milk out into the bottle. Ten minutes each side, then unscrew the lid and drink my own sweet liquid. Aaaaah...

In certain ways it is similar to masturbation. Satisfying most of the time, a beautiful act of auto-eroticism and self-care, a treat to relieve horniness or the desire to be touched or boredom or to cure whatever ills you. There is a 'money shot', a release of tension, and milk is just as likely to stick your magazine pages together as most other bodily substances. But sometimes the yearning to share the pleasure almost overwhelms me. At these times a pump is no substitute for the mouth of another. Only one half of the equation is being filled, the self/self pleasure circuits satisfied but not the desire for self/other mergings. Those moments of blurred bodily boundaries that breastfeeding entails by its very nature and design.

Before my milk came in there was a time when I dry-nursed someone whom I loved and who loved me, while the rain beat down around us. It was Sanctuary. The eyes that looked up from my breast seemed to recognise this, there was vulnerability and trust and abandoning of inhibitions. It felt pure and unadulterated.

I miss such connections, and sometimes as I pump the tears fall and water down my efforts. Breastmilk is both salty and sweet.

Feeding Breasts

2006-10-24T10:36:00.000+10:00

Someone on a adult nursing list recently described a comic they had seen years ago:

A woman is sitting at a table in a restaurant, with a waiter standing over her and telling her disapprovingly that 'there is no breastfeeding here Ma'am'. Look to her breasts, and you see that they are exposed and eating the food from her plate.

Boom boom! How did this wordplay not occur to me?

T-shirt Tale

2006-10-19T18:09:00.000+10:00

Saw a slightly unfriendly-looking person in a 'Fuck Milk- Got Pot?' shirt at the supermarket in Newtown last night (presumably a response to the 'Got Milk?' campaign in the US?). Would have loved a photo of me squeezing out a few drops at him as we stood next to the dairy cabinet but wasn't game to ask him really...

Rules of Engorgement

2006-10-17T10:05:00.000+10:00

Was busy being a trashy young tart and somehow didn't make it home from Saturday night to Monday morning. Didn't have my pump. Tried to hand express a bit, but couldn't get much out. Felt like a cow that hadn't been milked, almost bursting. When I finally pumped after 36 hours I did get a full ounce, but my breasts have not been the same since. They are swollen and aching... it hurts, quite a bit, but somehow it is nice being this full...

Real Live Lactating Girls

2006-10-17T10:03:00.000+10:00

From 13/10/06
Just spent a fun ten minutes squirting milk all over the window of the sunroom with The Yummy Mummy.

Tingle and Squirt

2006-10-09T16:25:00.000+10:00

i'm being a bit better with the pumping, and trying to manage to fit in three pumps a day (even if sometimes they are quite short sessions). not necessarily getting much more milk, but have noticed that my breasts are feeling much fuller and tingle quite a bit inbetween pumps.

also, and it has only been twice so far, i have been able to squirt milk from my right breast (the more exhibitionist one). as in, spray it right across the room! both times have been after pumping, and managed to do it about 3 or 4 times. looks rather spectacular i must say!

which reminds me of an art piece i saw years ago at the Australian Centre for Photography. the exhibition was concerned with pornography, and there was a collection of clothing and bags that (and my memory is a little hazy here) were made from some sort of silk and had these abtsract pattterns over them. i wondered what they were doing a porn exhibition until i read the explanation beside the display. in fact, the patterns were derived from female ejaculation, the process being to catch the 'cum shot' on a piece of paper, put it through some sort of chemical process to get a print of it and then somehow transfer this to the fabric... thinking of doing something similar with the milk-sprays... hmmm... so many ideas! must stop being all heartbroken and disillusioned and start working on other things that matter to me, more art and shows and maybe even write the paper I have to give this coming Friday...

White Tears

2006-10-06T12:25:00.000+10:00

There is a Sydney-based dyke sex mag called SLIT. At the moment they are seeking contributions for their 'T' issue. I am considering doing a photo along the lines of 'My breasts are eyes, crying milky tears'. Maybe false eyelashes on my nipples? Black and white, just tits and torso, crying myself a river across my milky white stomach.

The connections and correlations of breasts as eyes, the heart and the breast as sites of affect and emotion, baring one's breasts in mourning, the way my lacto consultant advised me to drink my own milk to heal my broken heart, my supervisor just reminded me that prolactin is a factor in both crying and lactating, the fact that one might spurt milk or burst into tears at the point of orgasm...

Titties and Beer

2006-10-06T01:07:00.000+10:00

Ftom last week:
A lover pointed out this morning that my tits had different personality traits. The right one is much more of a public figure, eager to be flashed about and a bit of a floozy. Whereas the left one is much more private and vulnerable and harder to get attached to. I think she has a point,as they are certainly very different to pump. I wonder if the brew reflects this difference anyhow, softer or smoother or crisper or sharper, and imagine Pale Ale flowing from one breast and Stout from the other. Anyone for a blind milk tasting?

Smells like Cow-Boy

2006-10-03T19:19:00.000+10:00

Research by the University of Chicago was quoted in a 2002 New Scientist article, 'Go for it, baby' by Alison Motluk, which states that 'smells associated with breastfeeding increased sexual intimacy in childless women volunteers'. Whilst the women did not actually report increased sexual activity, it seems that the study participants who sniffed absorbant pads that had been placed in the bras and under the arms of breastfeeding women 'did report significantly heightened and more enduring sexual desire and fantasies'.

In the same article, Richard Brown of Dalhousie Uni points out that higher than normal progesterone levels are found in breastfeeding women:

"'Maybe the high progesterone acts like an androgen' he speculates. 'Maybe it's the weirdest of possible things and they're producing male-like odours'".

The other day someone made a comment about me smelling like a boy, but I figured it was just that the fenugreek made me smell a lot stronger than I normally do and this was confusing to whoever it was (after all, boys are as rule much stinkier creatures than girls). Maybe there is a sideline business in this? I can compete with those little pheromone-impregnated towelettes that come from pub toilet vending machines... surely the Japanese will go fo it, if nobodye else!

And just as an amusing aside, someone on one of the adult nursing lists was asking about cream to help heal or prevent cracked nipples. Another member replied by suggesting Bag Balm, a beautifully named product originally designed for cows. Apparently it can be bought in some US drug stores as well as feed stores etc. If anyone finds any out here please let me know. My nipples are fine, but I love the name :)

Presenting... LactoGrrl!

2006-09-29T15:51:00.000+10:00

This is the bones of a talk I (as LactoGrrl) gave today to a USyd postgraduate conference. The great majority of it is taken straight from my Honours thesis, and it seemed to go down quite well I think. Was a little nervous as have never formally presented on this work before. Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, most of the questions afterwards came from vet students! The obligatory 'what theory are you using? came up, but I fobbed him off nicely I think. still working out theories that might be useful. If anyone has any ideas, please comment on this blog or email. On with the flow...

I'm Cath, aka LactoGrrl, and I've been asked to discuss my PhD thesis topic. My thesis is in the Media and Communications department, and will have as strong focus on breastfeeding as a way of transmission between bodies, not only of physical and immunological benefits but also knowledges, cultures and kinship. I've decided to use today's paper to analyse my own personal motivations and inspirations for choosing the topic of lactation in general and the more 'non-normative' forms of lactation and breastfeeding in particular. So to begin, a little bit about how I came to choose this area of research, and how it reflects my biography, my beliefs and my curiosities:

In late 2004 I attended one of the fortnightly Gender Studies department seminars. The last speaker was Fiona Giles, and though I can't recall the main thrust of the paper she gave, I was struck by the following quote:

'Unfortunately, it is only in pornography, and some rare examples of religious art, that alternative images of lactation are currently available' (2003: 166).

Defiantly ex-Catholic, a feminist, breastfed baby and pleasure activist, and with an Honours project to propose my interest was aroused. I contacted Fiona, and concocted myself a proposal for a thesis looking at the way lactating bodies were visually represented. Somewhere along the way this morphed into more of a study of the way lactating bodies were constructed as grotesque, spectacular, abject and carnivalesque.

For most people (myself included), lactation has always and only been an activity consciously considered in relation to maternity- a particularly feminine physical phenomenon. Born in the mid-1970s, I was raised with a steadfast belief in the wonders of colostrum and a fondness for recipes from the Nursing Mothers' Association Cookbook my Mum had stashed in a kitchen cupboard. All of the children in my immediate family were breastfed. When my youngest brothers (twins) were born seven weeks premature and ill they endured lengthy hospital stays, and a curious new machine entered our living room at home. I watched as my mother pumped sustenance and hope into bottles to be fed to these tiny creatures in their humidicribs. My grandmother questioned whether breastmilk was suitable for such sick children, and I questioned the thinking that led to such a doubt. Breast is best, naturally.

Years later, I became enamoured with bodily modifications, and configured myself as a Self-Made Freak. Hair every colour of the rainbow, shaved off in parts or no hair at all, dressed as Goth or Punk or Generic Alternative Girl (GAG). A pierced navel started a chain of perforations (both temporary and permanent), tattoos, a scarification, a branding. My favourite body artist explained to me that she would never ink the bellies of young girls, lest in future years they had babies and the process mutated her artwork (though she never mentioned the middle-aged 'masculine' beer-baby phenomenon as a deterrent― or that that mutation might not always be negative). It was for parallel reasons that I found it unthinkable to give my nipples up to the needle. They weren't my own, or at least not only mine. They belonged also to possible babies, to possible lovers, to other people. Eventually I gave in, and two metal bars signified the (at the time unspoken) recognition of the decision that my body would in all likelihood never bear children. I was most distressed when one bar needed to be removed, but later I began to reconsider my one remaining pierced nipple as somewhat Amazonian. One 'maternal' breast for feeding, one 'armoured' breast for fighting. My jewelled nipple to me signified a queer sexuality also, knowingly and unashamedly erect, whilst my unadorned nipple seemed to link back to a time before the question consciously arose. Now it seems that these singular meanings are hopelessly inadequate, and that positioning breasts in dichotomous pairings― passive/active, good/bad, natural/technical, masculine/feminine forces these breasts into pre-scripted parts and prevents spontaneous dialogues. Mammaries are multi-dimensional. My war breast may attack or defend, my milk breast might be a tool to nurture or destroy.

And its not only biological mothers who can lactate, or do. My first experience of adult nursing was rather unanticipated, and raised many questions about the capacities and capabilities of all bodies:

Its late afternoon on Leather Pride Fair Day and I'm strutting the streets in my chap skirt and biker boots. First place in the Best Body Modification competition sees me cock-sure of the queer status of my flesh; my inked Medusa and branded belladonna take on all comers. A friend is having drinks for her birthday, and we meet up in the cocktail lounge of a favourite bar. I'm perusing the menu, tossing up between the passionfruit caprioska and a vodka martini. My friend leans over the table and asks me if I like milk. A simple enough question, and still thinking cocktails I start to answer that I prefer something with a bit more sting as she grabs my hair and puts my mouth to her breast. Others in the group are giggling with ghoulish delight as I am force-fed for a moment or two. My friend revels in the capacities of her transformed self, the ability of her body to provoke and entertain― 'I can squirt it straight across the bar!' And she does. I'm still spluttering with surprise at both the attack and the uncanny familiarity of this action when somewhere in the back of my mind it registers that 'she' was actually 'he' not so long ago, and that the milk I am tasting is a by-product of the same chemical cocktail that has mellowed her voice and rounded her hips. My pierced nipple and scarred flesh don't seem quite so modified after all.

Its not every day that I am breastfed in a surprise attack by a kinky corset-clad transsexual at my local watering hole. The experience left me a little unsettled somehow, like there had been a breach of the boundaries between who and what could properly be connected. She is feeding me her milk, yet I am not her child. My mouth is on her nipple, though I am not her lover. Her bodily fluid is incorporated into my own cells, but we are not family. I am partaking of her flesh, but at the same time she is gobbling up my affect: our bodies simultaneously occupying the places of devoured and devourer. It's all sort of grotesque and a little bit monstrous really (although I tell myself that it is a learning experience). The laughter of the crowd acknowledges all of these elements, and I find myself laughing too. In the carnival space of that moment the whole world is turned topsy turvy and I can't quite tell if I am participant or audience to the spectacle. Either way, I am enjoying myself, but I wonder if this kind of thing is permitted or whether the barmaid is about to call security against our 'drunk' and disorderly throng. Certainly, I feel slightly out of it. And the most intoxicating brew in this bar certainly did not come on the rocks or decorated with a paper parasol. There was something slightly disconcerting about the taste and the temperature of the milk, something that made me feel a slight disgust. But although I squirmed away on initial contact I was soon wondering if perhaps I might be game for another drop. Ah, the sweet push and pull of the abject! It was in some regards a pornographic and unholy display of bodily parts and fluids, yet I came away feeling somewhat blessed. Relaying the story afterwards to my friends, I wished somebody had taken a photo― mostly to affirm to myself that it actually happened. Finally, there was the confusion that this was a body that I assumed not to lactate in the first place. What type of self-induced evolution had incarnated this hybrid goddess?

By the time my I had started my PhD I had come to the conclusion that I needed to try inducing lactation myself. Partly out of a desire to push my bodily limits, but more than anything from a belief that to participate in something is a pretty good way to learn about it. So I started pumping, taking fenugreek, drinking milk thistle and fennel teas and three weeks later my milk came in. I have set up a blog to keep notes of the process, which will later become a chapter in its own right. Once I am producing enough milk I will undertake a number of art projects, from performances to photos to making ice-cream and invisible ink, and include these too. To paraphrase Helene Cixous, I will write myself, and my thesis, in white ink…

Meet Mammarella?

2006-09-28T18:20:00.000+10:00

Was having coffee with friends the other day when it was decided that we must go at play in the sex shop upstairs from our fave gelato bar. I was innocently discussing who buys lactoporn, and my lacto project, studies etc with the new owner, when he mentioned that he had something I might be interested in. Did he ever!

As of tomorrow when I collect her, I will be the proud 'owner' of a Lactating Blow-Up Doll (and the Inflate-A-Date pump with which to breathe life into her). She is blonde, of course, with three functional orifices (no points for guessing which) and two vibrating parts (which two I'm not sure). As a quirky extra feature she comes with a pubic hair tattoo which may be applied if you like your girl to be furry. Or at least as furry as a transfer can get. Then, of course, are the BREASTS, which you can fill up with milk and then suckle from them, squirt milk across the room or over your face or... endless hours of mammary moistness and mayhem!

Think she will be a great performance partner. But what to name her? Could do a Daisy, Clover or Bertha 'cow' name I suppose. Or maybe choose one of my 'Milk Fever' cast members such as:

La Milquetta
Fugitive Fluid and Milk Diva.
Italian, not shy of melodramatic displays.
Highly theatrical with a biting wit. Prone to histrionic outbursts and most often found bitching and getting up to no good with Bludzilla.

But then again, perhaps I would be more suitable as La Milquetta! Maybe Mamma Milkenstein? Any other suggestions? (BTW I have named my pump Lactentia Sugentia aka The Suckling One). Will post a photo of her once I have collected, inflated pube-ified and milk-ed her.

Mother Milk Talk

2006-09-27T17:10:00.000+10:00

As I mentioned before I had been strangely uneasy about telling me mother about the LactoGrrl Project. Seemed odd to be discussing it with the woman who breastfed me (after birthing me), like it was a 'womanly art' that daughters ought to share with their Mums- but I was cheating at being a woman!? What type of 'pseudo-daughter' am I?

Eventually bit the bullet and told her last night. She didn't even blink. Seemed to be expecting it, especially after having read my Honours thesis. And she knows me well enough not to consider it out of my range of inquiry... was nice to 'get it off my chest'. Although I still waited until everyone was in bed until I pumped it was considerably less nerve-racking. Showed her my pump (with my milk) in it this morning and it was all matter-of-fact chat about when she fed me and my brothers, weaning, expressing etc. Nice, if odd.

On a different note, am enjoying being a bit bigger in the breast department. Having lost quite a bit o weight my tits were a mere shadow of their former glory and I missed them spilling out of dresses and into mouths. Hoping to feed some dear friends tonight, want to see what it is like with adults. When I was in Melbourne recently a friend let me try her young child at the breast and it was beautiful, if short-lived 'cos she wasn't getting much (that's us in the photo)...

I Make Milk (front)... What's Your SuperPower?(back)

2006-09-26T10:09:00.000+10:00

So proclaims the t-shirt I was wearing yesterday. Got MUCH more of a reaction than I anticipated! In Newtown: 'that's a very cheeky shirt' from an old woman, plus two Reading Out Loud, one from a teenage boy who nearly wet himself when I told him I meant it, and the other from a mother/daughter duo who laughed when they read the back. In Randwick at the Hospital a few mean looks from middle-aged bitches, then a big smile from a Mum with a young kid, then two boys selling phone products stopped me in the shopping centre to ask about it.

I had assumed that not many people would take notice of it, or would presume it was some sort of band promo or the like. I mean, I don't look like most people's idea of a breeder/feeder. And the shirt doesn't have any reference to breastfeeding, so I figured it would be read as a little ambiguous. It seems I was wrong.

Milk Me A Rainbow

2006-09-20T15:23:00.000+10:00

I can see a BIG trip to the produce market required for my latest milky experimentations. The lovely LRC ladies have just been filling me in on how to make my milk different colours. Already had yellow (colostrum), but wanting to add these to the spectrum:

Green-
Kelp
Spinach
Green Vegies
Wheatgrass

Pink-
Beetroot

Orange-
Carrots

Any other suggestions?

Also found out that one can ultrasound one's breasts and see all the ducts moving as you express milk. This is one to investigate. Anyone have access to an fancypants ultrasound machine and the technology to record it?

Curious Yellow?

2006-09-20T13:05:00.000+10:00

From 19/09
Pumped this morning when I got to the Lactation Resource Centre. What came out was YELLOW. Was mildly weirded out, but didn't photograph it. I should have taken a happy snap, because later that day I was walking past a big board showing you what different types of milk looked like, from different stages of breastfeeding. The first one was colostrum, the stuff that your body produces first thing post-partum and that is thick and full of nutrients. IT IS ALSO BRIGHT YELLOW! Damn, shouldn't have tipped my 'mutant milk' down the sink- should have tasted it at least as it appears it was the really good stuff. Next pumping it was back to being white, which was rather disappointing. Hoping that tomorrow is the same as today so I can take a picture and also show it to the women there. Will probably be grossing some of you casual readers out about now, but to me it is VERY exciting! And I bought myself the 'I make milk/What's your superpower?' t-shirt. Fantastic! And I am finding TONS of articles that will be extremely useful for my work, all sorts of quirky things filed in these huge folders from the last 30 years or so (and fortunately there is a database). Think I will need a couple of days more there!

Today:
Pumped again when I got here. Not as yellow, and a bit more watery, but I took some photos anway which I will download here when I get back to Sydney. Nobody seemed too excited or suprised about it as I was. Had been told that when inducing you didn't produce colostrum, and in addition to this I presumed that as I had already been getting thin white (fore?)milk that colostrum wouldn't be making an appearance.

Have run out of Dom Peridone (or Mo Tillium if you prefer- they both sound like gangsters) and thinking maybe just try to kep going with the fenugreek and see what happens. Not pumping very often while on this trip, and don't want to dry it up completely. Hmm...

Apparently asparagus consumption may turn my milk black. And green cordial or spinach may turn it green. This MUST be tried!

Lezzo Mother Artiste Makes Cocktails

2006-09-20T12:56:00.000+10:00

Forgot to post this link on a piece by Jess Dobkin a while ago:
Art school serves up breast milk cocktail

And you can check out Dobkin's site.

Drip, splutter, squelch

2006-09-15T13:00:00.000+10:00

Have been taking the Fenugreek for four days, 1000mg four time a day. I am smelling like maple. Breasts feeling and looking fuller than ever. When I had finished pumping last night I realised that milk had spilled down onto the newspaper I was reading. This morning it dripped all over my thigh. Might be time to actually attach the bottle to the pump and see if I can catch myself some LactoGrrl Juice. Worth bottling I reckon after this much effort.

Have just bought some fennel seeds to brew up which may help with letdown. If not, they're kind of yummy and probably good for me anyway!

Bataille and I

2006-09-15T12:44:00.000+10:00

'Now in the corner of a hallway there was a saucer of milk for the cat. "Milk is for the pussy, isn't it?" said Simone. "Do you dare me to sit in the saucer?"

"I dare you," I answered almost breathless.

The day was extremely hot. Simone put the saucer on a small bench, planted herself before me, and, with her eyes fixed on me, she sat down without my being able to see her burning buttocks under the skirt, dipping into the cool milk. The blood shot to my head, and I stood before her awhile, immobile and trembling, as she eyed my stiff cock bulging in my trousers. Then I lay down at her feet without her stirring, and for the first time, I saw her "pink and dark" flesh cooling in the white milk. We remained motionless, both of us equally overwhelmed…

Suddenly, she got up, and I saw the milk dripping down her thighs up to the stockings. She wiped herself evenly with a handkerchief as she stood over my head with one foot on the small bench, and I vigorously rubbed my cock through the trousers while writhing amourously on the floor. We reached orgasm at almost the same instant without even touching one another'

Yesterday my morning began with Whoretic reclined on a lounge in the backyard reading aloud the above passage from Bataille's 'Story of The Eye' (10) whilst I sipped Milk Thistle infusion and pumped. French surrealist porn in the early sunshine as my breast get all wet. Perfect.

Milk Thistle Tea

2006-09-11T14:07:00.000+10:00

And now, its all changed again!

Not so much drops, as DRIPS... is wetter and thinner and seems more to seep from whole areole in genereal than appear as a single spot from one in particular. And whereas my breasts where feeling full and hard and tight now they feel more floppy and soft again, and not so much of the shooting pains business. Began drinking a pot of milk thistle tea (2 teaspoons) a day from Saturday, and hopefully the fenugreek will be in today at the shop and I can start that this evening. Still pumping religiously and taking the Motillium. Today marks the start of the third week of this routine, and starting to get impatient... hmmm... just got to keep on keeping on I guess :)

MilkBrained Again

2006-09-05T22:38:00.000+10:00

Aborted July's attempt at inducing due to the inconvenience of lugging big heavy pump around everywhere. Bought myself a new hand pump though, totally manual and light and small-ish. Then had a few days away road-tripping with the Boy, and decided that sitting in the passenger seat for hours on end was the perfect setting to just kick back and relax and pop motillium and pump. This was 8 days ago.

Still pumping 4 or 5 times each day for around 10-15 minutes each breast (if I have time), and taking 20mg of motillium 4 times a day. Its working I think. Getting white drops, which do appear to be milk. Breasts get sore when its time to pump. Much bigger. Getting shooting pains when I pump, and sometimes in between. Short but sharp! Fingers crossed that these are let-down ouchies.

A friend who is a nurse told me this afternoon that I had that look of new mothers, like I had just put the laundry in the oven or driven away from the shopping centre and left the kid at the checkout. Its about how I feel. Keep wanting to cry when I pump, and its not the pain (that is bearable, and more like a hard massage that hurts good than completely undesirable agony) but more some wave of hormonal(?)emotion. A welling. A spilling. A bursting of a dam. Or maybe more of a slow seeping.

Still very self-consious about pumping in public. Have organised access to my supervisors office when am at Uni during office hours, and can also sneak into one of the empty research rooms in my building. Stayed at my parent's place over the weekend and pumped in the middle of the night and massaged when I could so that I didn't need to explain it. Is funny, its something that my mother taught me in one way- breast is best. I knew that lanolin was good for cracked nipples when I was a child, knew that breastmilk was a wonder fluid and made biscuits and playdough from recipes in the Nursing Mother's Cookbook. Milkiness is something we could bond on in another context, woman to woman, sharing tales of milky trials and tribulations. But I am not a mother, there is no baby, its a natural womanly function brought about rather unnaturally. Or...? Anyway, I can't imagine how to explain my reasoning, or justify it. So I snuck around with my hands up my shirt, didn't wince when the pains struck me and didn't show my drops to anyone.

Went to the Ginseng Bath House last night for a soak and a scrub and while being sluiced down and having my skin sloughed off it occurred to me just how fabulously funny it would be if my tits were to suddenly start spurting while being massaged. And then I imagined my milk flowing out into that warm ginseng bath, milky tea...

Milk Maiden

2006-07-12T16:16:00.000+10:00

(11th July)

I woke up late and coming down with a cold, and pumped after my morning meditation. Deep down I can sense my breasts begin to stir, to talk incoherently in their dreams and wonder sleepily what time it is. In the afternoon I pumped again. This time when I removed the pump from my left breast there was the tiniest half-drop of white fluid coming from my nipple. Somewhat excited, I rang my supervisor to tell her, and sent the Boy a rather blurry picture taken on my mobile phone camera. He asked what it tasted like, and though it was too small an amount to really swill around my mouth I tell him I think that it was sort of sweet? Not sure if this impression came from experience, expectation, or both, but it seemed right somehow. (Anyway, I told him, if you play your cards right you’ll get to try it for yourself.) Down at the ocean, I watched a big yellow full moon rise and sparkle across the water and felt that delcious sense of knowing just what you have when you have it. At the next pumping, quite possibly my last for the day, I noticed my left nipple exuding a small amount of clear fluid. True, this is not lactation as such yet, and it may well be all the liquid I squeeze out for quite a while. All the same, these are encouraging developments! Think this week I will buy some cream for my nipples, already looking slightly traumatised, and perhaps some nursing tea. The current plan is to pump as much as possible for the next fortnight and reassess my progress. Maybe I will try motillium if nothing new is happening. And I need to find somewhere to pump at Uni. I’m not overly concerned about being seen from a privacy perspective as such, although sometimes one does just want to get on with doing what one needs to do without becoming a public education campaign EVERY time. And I can see this happening if I should pump, well-meaning women making small talk about children and me feeling obliged to explain the whole story and… sometimes this is okay, even fun, but not once or twice every day I am at work. The unit needs a power supply too, and is not exactly quiet, so my shared office space is not very appropriate. The women’s room might be an option, but is very easy to see into from the hallway. Perhaps I could hide in the corner? Oh dear, this is all beginning to sound like so many accounts told by breastfeeding mothers— possibly I should invest in a large shawl for me and my pump?

Writing Myself in White Ink

2006-07-12T16:00:00.000+10:00

(10th July 2006)

Tonight I began seriously pumping- only about a month after I had planned to! It simply seemed like time.

The first half of this year has been one of many personal losses. My partner of two years abandoned me. I lost a lot of money to her. After a long period of having my spirituality, my identity, my sexuality, my body and my work demeaned by someone I loved dearly I lost touch with what I value in myself. Somewhere along the way I also misplaced the ability to live without apology, and the faith to trust my gut instincts. A number good friends gave up on me, as they no longer knew me anyway. I was homeless for a while. A close friend (and ex-lover) died. The combined force of this all shook me to my very foundations and I began to doubt the stability of both my mind and my matter.

It is time to rebuild and reinvent. Through luck (and rather brazen text messages) I became somehow entangled with the very sweet Boy, and he has done much to reacquaint me with the pleasures and possibilities of my body. My new home, a gift from a truly inspired friend, is one of sanctuary and silliness. A most intuitive hypnotherapist reminded me that I can have confidence in the capabilities and knowledges of my flesh. After quite a hiatus I have begun pushing my bodily boundaries again— having undertaken a hook suspension, rope suspension, piercings and cuttings recently (and I have a saline labia infusion planned for the near future). Today I went swimming in the mid-winter sea until my veins felt like they might burst open with adrenaline and then sat alone at the edge of the ocean, laughing and shivering with the seagulls and the waves. I am performing in public again, and revisiting the joys of dressing in whatever drag my fancies dictate. I’ve rediscovered how to flirt with strangers, and pull faces at small children when their parents aren’t looking. Most of all, I am remembering how to play with myself— to be joyful and adventurous, to discover and imagine and participate in my own evolution. Without apology.

I include inducing lactation as part of this process. It is a gift from myself to myself, a dose of feel-good oxytocin and nurturing not reliant on another body’s participation or permission. Self-loving and auto-erotic. Its something that I have always wanted to do, although for the most part I always imagined it as involving a baby of some description. But inducing lactation now is not for a baby, or for anyone else at all— it is for me. Fiona Giles gives an account from ‘Lilith’, who fantasises about breastfeeding her grieving friend as a form of solace and healing and to ‘erase the pain of another’s breast with one’s own’(2003: 46). In this vein I will provide myself with some of comfort, consolation and confidence. To paraphrase Helene Cixous, I will write myself in white ink.

And so I begin to pump. I fiddle about with positions and for twenty minutes my nipples and areole are sucked by this machine as I sit cross-legged on a rug in front of the heater. I imagined I might be able to read (some lacto-porn perhaps, just to help with the mood), but with both hands required to hold the pumps in place it proved quite difficult. This strikes me as an activity more easily in front of the TV, or at least with some musical accompaniment. It’s an odd sensation, and I find myself both mildly aroused. I can feel the swell already, the tide is coming in...

Still musing upon Maternity

2006-05-25T15:58:00.000+10:00

Was feeling a little odd after 'baby' posting yesterday. Then started re-reading my dissertation from my Honours year, and stumbled across:

'In particular, non-procreative female sexuality is often viewed as negative or frivolous: Elisabeth Wilson asserts that the evolutionary argument that relegates female sexuality to the sphere of reproduction restricts the interpretation of data on the subject; Carter points to lesbian ways of bodily experience as a site offering subversive meanings for the act of breastfeeding; and lactation pornography wilfully celebrating milkiness outside of biological parenthood is still marginal at best (Bartlett). Halberstam and Livingstone put forth that biological reproduction is ‘merely one possible function of one possible kind of fucking, as well as merely one of the many kinds of reproduction required to perpetuate the code of the human’ (12).'

Much to muse upon still...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
partial ref, badly formatted:
Bartlett, Alison. Breastwork: Rethinking Breastfeeding. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005
Halberstam, Judith and Livingstone, Ira (eds). "Introduction: Posthuman Bodies." Posthuman Bodies. USA: Indiana Universiy Press, 1995.

Milky Magic

2006-05-24T16:34:00.000+10:00

Some ideas for milky art happenings:

* High Milk Tea. Invite selected friends and colleagues to a Tea Party, with most of the items on the menu made from breastmilk. Must start hunting recipes, and non-squeamish guests!
* Making a champagne glass fountain, overflowing with breastmilk. I do believe that the shape of the champagne glass itself was based upon that of the breast of the Mistress of some French king or another, so it seems somehow appropriate.
* Invisible Ink piece. Helene Cixous claimed to 'write in white ink'. You can use cow milk as 'invisible ink'- write with it on white paper, let it dry, then iron/heat the paper and up comes your text. Should work with human breastmilk?
* Obtain one of those baby-sling things in which to carry about my pump. And must think of a name for her (the pump) too- then hold a naming ceremony. Actaully, think she is twins- Lactentia and Sugentia!
* Photo series/performance piece as Hera, spurting out the Milky Way.
* Use the songs Cow Cow Boogie (Ella Mae Morse) and I Want to be a Cowboy (Boys Don't Cry) for a show. Some sort of dairy farm experience with pumps and a milkmaid or such I expect. Predictable, but hey, it'll be fun :)
* Set myself up in a bar offering cocktails made with my 'special ingredient'.

I tried to do a LactoGrrl spoken word piece the other night, but when it came to the crunch just couldn't make myself go through with it. The crowd just seemed so... NICE. And for some reason it felt just too intimidating to read what was essentially lacto-porn while dribbling vanilla milkshake all over my face and shirt in front of those people. It felt frivolous, or unworthy, or just plain distateful. Why? People were reading pieces about politics and family, and this clearly intersects with both of these but still it just felt wrong. Do nice people not fantasise about such things? Do they not speak about such things? Do they not indeed DO such things? What made me feel so vulnerable in that setting? All of a sudden I was incredibly conscious that what I am embarking on with this whole LactoGrrl project is so related to the future I imagined for myself when I was young (the 'Earth-Mother-ness' of lactation and nursing) yet so far away from how I imagined it. No baby and no husband and no mother's group. Lactation consultant and plastic pump and chemicals and... for a minute I half-wondered why I didn't just do it the 'normal' way. You know, so I could turn up to speak with cringeworthy yet amusing anecdotes about sore nipples and feeling like a cow mixed in with stories of baby vomit and c-sections- my milkiness situated in its 'right and proper' context. I don't want the baby and all its trimmings and trappings, but for that moment I felt like I SHOULD. Will look for another venue, something a little more Queer and Quirky perhaps this time- I know I need to speak these words in public.

Inducing LactoGrrl

2006-05-24T15:37:00.000+10:00

Have been putting myself through quite a bit lately, and finally cracked it seems and come down with an ouchy old sinus infection and a mild case of sulky old melancholy. A trip overseas, starting PhD, breaking up with longterm partner, various art projects, moving house (and crashing on a lot of lounges inbetween), hook suspension, graduation, 'take-down scene' performance, and a deliciously kinky new Boy to share it all with- its all positive (even the odd seemingly negative bit) but more than a little draining too!!! Time to put on the brakes for a couple of weeks I think...

I have the pump (just needs a new powercord). I have access to the drugs if necessary. I have the 'Milk Tea' (fenugreek, caraway, aniseed and milk thistle? from memmory). And I have the Boy willing to lend a helping mouth in the suckling department. All set to go.

Tentative start date for Inducing LactoGrrl: June 13th.

Sooner than I originally planned, but getting a bit impatient really. And will give me a nice distraction while I do my literature review!

My Milkshake Brings All The Boys To The Yard

2006-05-16T16:15:00.000+10:00

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard
And their like, It's better than yours
Damn right it's better than yours
I can teach you, But I have to charge
I know you want it
The thing that makes me
What the guys go crazy for
They lose their minds, The way I wind,I think its time
[Chorus x2]
La la-la la la,Warm it up.
Lala-lalala,The boys are waiting
My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard
And their likeIt's better than yours
Damn right it's better than yours,
I can teach you, But I have to charge
I can see youre on it
You want me to teach thee
Techniques that freaks these boys,It can't be bought
Just know, thieves get caught
Watch if your smart
[Chorus x2]
La la-la la la
Warm it up,La la-la la la
The boys are waiting
My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard
And their likeIt's better than yours
Damn right it's better than yours
I can teach you, But I have to charge
Oh, once you get involved
Everyone will look this way-so
You must maintain your charm
Same time maintain your halo
Just get the perfect blend
Plus what you have within
Then next his eyes are squint
Then he's picked up your scent
[Chorus x2]
Lala-lalala,Warm it up
Lala-lalala,The boys are waiting
My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard
And their like, It's better than yours
Damn right it's better than yours
I can teach you, But I have to charge
- Kelis

His eyes are squint? The perfect blend? He's picked up your scent? Am I missing something, or is this just an ode to The Milky Mammary?

In a quick update: have a spoken word piece to do on Saturday night. Planning a lacto-pornesque kind of thing, complete with milk-moustache and/or drinking a glass of soy while speaking so it all dribbles down my chin and shirtfront. First piece of lacto-art from LactoGrrl. Will post the draft here, and pix if I get any.

LactoGrrl's GalactaBlogue- An Introduction

2006-05-16T15:27:00.000+10:00

Galactagogue: A substance used to increase the production of breastmilk.
Galactablogue: A blog created to document, dissect, discuss and debate the production of breastmilk by LactoGrrl.

Who is LactoGrrl?

LactoGrrl is:
A Sydney-based Freelance Provocateur, Rabble Rouser and Public Spectacle
An academic currently writing her doctorate on non-normative lactation
A performer at various underground events
Queer, Omnisexual and Extremely Curious
Moderately modified- piercings, tattoos, branding, scarifications etc
Not looking for a partner- truly

And most importantly...

About to embark on a quest to induce lactation.

This endeavour is partially prompted by a personal interest in pushing my own bodily boundaries, an intellectual curiousity regarding connections between bodies and a slightly perverted streak that has a long-held fascination with body fluids. In the course of this project I will induce lactation, record my progress and attempt a number of art projects utilising both the process and the product. The purpose of this blog is to provide a space for anyone interested in this project to keep up to date with my trials, tribulations and successes and to make suggestions and comments.

And so

On with the Flow!

LactoGrrl

PLEASE NOTE: This is NOT a 'personal' ad, as I am not seeking a nursing partner.

GalactaBlogue

Curds Away!

Milk Jewels

Non-Maternal Writers Of 'The Maternal'

Milk And Tears

Curdle- Pictures Of Y

Curdle- Psychedelic Milk

CURDLE- THE END AND ESCAPE 19/04/08

CURDLE JOURNAL 18/04/08

CURDLE- Moving Images

Curdle- Wee Small Hours With Y

CURDLE- Darklings Journal

CURDLE- Beatie's Blog

Well And Truly CurdleD

CurldeD Is At 6pm, Saturday 19th

CURDLE JOURNAL 17/04/08

CURDLE JOURNAL 16/04/08

CURDLE JOURNAL 15/04/08

CURDLE JOURNAL 14/04/08

CURDLE JOURNAL 13/04/08

CURDLE JOURNAL 12/04/08 continued

CurdleD- Invitation

CURDLE PIX

CURDLE JOURNAL 11-12/04/08

CURDLE JOURNAL 10/04/08

CURDLE JOURNAL 09/04/08

Pump It Up

MilkBrained

Curdle- My Boundaries

Here Comes The Rain Again

Curdle My Milk *CALL FOR ARTISTS AND OTHER CREATIVE TYPES*

Books On Boobs

Getting Pumped

CURDLE- THE INSTALLATION

Breastly Boundaries

Nursey's Milk Chocolate

Recipe For Induced Lactation

She Spits Out Stars

Abstract For A Conference Paper Yet To Be Written

Breast, Brain, And Brawn

Facebook Sucks, But Not Milky Breasts It Seems

Inducing Endurance Piece

Flow Shows

White Tears

Stinking Hearts

My Cups Runneth Over

Milked Dry

Powdered Milk

Breasts and Chests

Divine Bovine

Nipple Breath

Milk'N'Cookies

Its An Ill Breast That Gives No Milk

Greek Letters

Christina The Astonishing

Pumped Up Dads

Cheese Queen

Mmmm, Maple Milk

Fuck The Milk

Salty and Sweet

Feeding Breasts

T-shirt Tale

Rules of Engorgement

Real Live Lactating Girls

Tingle and Squirt

White Tears

Titties and Beer

Smells like Cow-Boy

Presenting... LactoGrrl!

Meet Mammarella?

Mother Milk Talk

I Make Milk (front)... What's Your SuperPower?(back)

Milk Me A Rainbow

Curious Yellow?

Lezzo Mother Artiste Makes Cocktails

Drip, splutter, squelch

Bataille and I

Milk Thistle Tea

MilkBrained Again

Milk Maiden

Curdle My Milk CALL FOR ARTISTS AND OTHER CREATIVE TYPES