Mothers' Room - Panel Discussion 2

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Can we create healthy existences with new and modified parental behaviours or are we distorting future generations by transforming humanity into new and unimaginable conundrums that we cannot manage or sustain in the long-run or reverse-engineer ? Are we debasing good and well established models from a functional past or is it time to remodel these traditional patterns and avoid regression and retardation ? Shall we embrace all these technological advancements, gender-role shifts and feel grateful and indepted to all those motherly fathers (where fathers are sometimes better mothers than mothers) and accept our way forward or should we get our aprons back on, bake cakes, roll-out chapathis, slowdown and practice more yoga ?

Are these times offering more advancements or more challenges ? How will societies change with continued waves of digitisation ? Whether parenting alone or with others, have things become easier or are there more unmanageable spirals of complexities ? Has the world of high productivity and throughput, with the seemingly infinitessimal possibilities brought us to a better state of existence, reducing our struggles, with better sets of arrangements or have we finally gone entropically mad ? How will the onset of artificial intelligence and newer ideas of replacing human capital with machines change the shape of things to come ? Will mothering be outsourced to machines ? WoMan or machine ? Is it a help or a hinderance ?

Some workshops will be held in English and some in German, with translations where needed.

Participants

Discussion Summary

Interesting and recent references

Five Million Incidents blog - Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi and Kolkata
Mutter und Kind - Museum der Kulturen Basel
Die Geburt einer Mutter (Matrescence) - Exhibition in London
Kunst ist ein krimineller Akt - Ulrike Rosenbach
Kunst mit Kind - ein echtes Kunststück
Between Production and Reproduction - Career and Motherhood in the Artworld