A Brooklyn artist, Marni Kotak, has decided that childbirth is an art, according to a report in The Week. So she has turned Brooklyn’s Microscope Gallery into a birthing center for six weeks as part of a performance piece called, “The Birth of Baby X.”
Kotak is spending every day for six weeks at the gallery-which has been transformed into a “birthing room,” complete with inflatable birthing tub-until the baby arrives. A midwife, doula and husband will be at her side, and audiences are invited to watch the entire spectacle so long as they mind their manners.
But the performance won’t stop there. After the birth of her child, Kotak plans to continue the “performance art” through an 18-year project called, “The Raising of Baby X.” Throughout the project she hopes to document her baby’s childhood with weekly video podcasts until she turns 18.
The Internet is buzzing about her project. Some have called it child abuse. Others say that performance art is all about pushing boundaries, noting a history of artists going nude, sharing intimate body parts and performing other unusual acts. One artist even went so far as to shoot himself in the arm and called that performance art. Kotak’s previous pieces included an enactment called “Losing My Virginity in a Blue Plymouth.
It is one thing to push the boundaries of art when it only involves the artist. If someone wants to shoot himself in the arm, I have no problem with that. It’s his choice and he is hurting nobody but himself. If two consenting adults want to have sex in a gallery and call that art, that’s their choice. But when you are involving somebody else in your art without their consent-especially an infant-that goes beyond pushing the boundaries of art; it is pushing the boundaries of healthy parenting. You are exploiting your child, tampering with a child’s future for the sake of present glory.
Let’s consider for a moment the birthing and raising of Baby X from the child’s point of view. Birth is a shock to all babies; they cry out when they have left the comfort of the womb and first encounter the outside world. It is probably like being pulled out of a nice, quiet, warm bed into a cold, smelly world full of jackhammers. Otto Rank, a 20th Century psychoanalyst, was the first to use the term “birth trauma” to connote the idea that the anxiety experienced during birth was the model for all subsequent psychological traumas.
How traumatic will it be for this baby to be born in a public gallery? And how susceptible will that initial trauma make him or her for the ones to follow?
In order for babies and children to thrive, they need genuine love and physical comforting. If their mother is performing for a camera, is she being a genuine mother?
Is her love genuine or fake? A baby will that pick that up. When the child becomes aware of constantly being on camera, how will he or she feel? The parents will no doubt convince the child is it good and normal to be on camera, maybe even better than normal. So will the child have to stuff any negative feelings about it?
Will the mother be over-preoccupied with her child, like a stage mother? Her child-rearing techniques will be on public display, as will the results. Will that pressure her to dote too much on the kid. Will that cause her and the father to look at the whole experiment through rose-colored glasses? And will that in turn force the kid to internalize feelings and become overly dependent on parents?
And finally, will the child grow up feeling that her life is not her own, but that it in facts belongs to her parents and to the public?
Childhood Reality TV is not unlike any other Reality TV; nobody ever knows how it will turn out.
Gerald Schoenewolf, Ph.D., licensed psychoanalyst, professor and author of 20 books, has a website at www.drschoenewolf.com.