Veure espermatozoides al riu

Abstract

Adjunto la memòria escrita que acompanya Veure espermatozoides al riu, un vídeo-assaig sobre el desig maternal basat en la meva experiència personal de voler ser mare sense parella. A partir de les converses que mantinc amb quatre persones properes -tres d’elles sense parella i en diferents moments de la maternitat- el vídeo traça un recorregut no lineal ni conclòs sobre qüestions relacionades amb l’origen d’aquest desig, el concepte de família i la relació quasi obligada que tenim amb les clíniques de fertilitat. Després d’expressar aquest desig moltes preguntes sorgeixen en el meu interior. Com i des de quin lloc es construeix el relat del desig maternal? En quins contextos es permet parlar d’aquest desig? Està idealitzat? Reprimit? Es pot racionalitzar? A partir de qüestions com aquestes comença la meva recerca que sustenta el marc teòric d’aquest projecte inclòs a la memòria. Al llarg d’aquest viatge, que comença el març del 2021, em trobo amb diferents interpretacions, punts de vista i posicionaments respecte el desig i respecte els límits i les estructures que reproduïm per atzar o per sentir-nos en equilibri en relació amb l’ordre social establert. La línia de fuga que marca aquest vídeo son les respostes de l’Alba, la Sílvia, l’Anna i Jou a preguntes que jo també em faig. Imatges que se situen més en un imaginari col·lectiu com captures de pel·lícules, fotografies personals, cites i altres vídeos d’un caràcter més oníric, acompanyen les converses i a la vegada recolzen la part discursiva del projecte.

Veure espermatozoides al riu (See spermatozoa in the river) is a project based on my personal experience of wishing to become a mother without a partner. From the moment I first expressed this desire, in March 2021, I began to look for different ways to materialize it by going to some clinics of fertility treatment. I also became a member of the Association Single Mothers by Choice where I hoped to find more information and meet other women who are in a similar situation to mine. At the same time, I read that from an etymological meaning of the word desire, to desire would be to confirm the absence of something. That triggered my interest to learn more about maternal desire and to ask myself how other people I met during my research understand their desire. The project traces different paths of this research and the report accompanies the theoretical and conceptual framework of a video-essay that is based mainly on conversations I have with four people in different stages of motherhood. Based on different references that have been present during this process, the approach of this project is based on finding the origin of this desire, investigating the structures that we have been building since childhood, seeking to unravel them, breaking down limits and accompanying me with more transformative imaginaries. With Alba, Silvia, Anna and Jou we have been accompanying each other and facing a complex reality from the very beginning of our journey. This is a project that talks about me, about the friendship I have with them and about the answers I expect to some questions I also ask myself. The conversations we have reproduce the intimate space in which we have met many times before. I take the opportunity to delve into what stands out in each story or makes it different from the others. However, in the final cut I have had to leave out many individual particularities because they seemed to me perhaps anecdotal or that they were too far from the subject of which I was more interested in talking about in this video. The video connects ideas and concepts about what we think we know about maternal desire. It combines spaces of conversation, first-person narration and footage of films that are part of a more collective imagination. In what is intimate and experiential I position myself more as an observer than as a participant. My appearance accompanies, intervenes and is the common thread towards a discourse that goes from something more individual and specific, such as the origin of our desire, to a social reality, such as assisted reproduction, which affects a much wider population. This is a project accompany a displacement, a change that goes from an uncomfortable place and a feeling of lack, to a much more transformative place accompanied by the posthuman trend of thought, mainly from the hand of the philosopher Rosi Braidotti. Her theories, aimed at a more shared present-future, coincide with the critical ideas that the biologist Sara Lafuente exposes about the reproductive markets. The combination of thoughts from these two academic feminists raises many more questions for me during the course of the project.