Breastmilk tasting performance gets some press...
and of course some people are having problems because the artist received government grants to make this work...
Breast milk bar fails to raise Tory ire; federal arts funding at arm's length
National News
By: BRUCE CHEADLE OTTAWA (CP) - The federal Conservative government says it won't lay a hand on the Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar. A Toronto performance artist is offering the public an opportunity to sample human breast milk, in the spirit of wine tasting, and the lesbian single mother is using a $9,000 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to help get the creative juices flowing. That's the kind of avant garde stuff that used to make Conservative MPs paw the earth in opposition. Tories and their Canadian Alliance and Reform party forebears have teed off over the past decade on government arts funding for everything from Bubbles Galore, a soft-porn art film, to Scatalogue: 30 Years of Crap in Contemporary Art, to a masturbating Mexican and the controversial "flesh dress" - a 23-kilogram flank steak number that once hung in the National Gallery. "The whole concept is just totally obscene and one thin dime of public money going to something like this would be 10 cents too much," B.C. MP Jim Abbott fumed in 2001 over Mexican artist Israel Mora's ejaculate, on display in a cooler at the Banff Centre. Today, Abbott is parliamentary secretary to Heritage Minister Bev Oda and a more reticent art critic. Inquiries to his office Friday about the lactation station prompted a return call from Oda's spokesman, Robert Paterson, who said the Canada Council for the Arts operates at arm's length from the government. "I can't offer an official view on this particular program," said Paterson. "It would be inappropriate for the minister to interfere directly." The Conservative government, added Paterson, continues to support funding for artists who have "a positive message for Canadians." Jason Kenney, parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, reacted with bemusement rather than anger to the breast milk sampler, which is scheduled for July 13 at the Ontario College of Art & Design Professional Gallery. "Personally I think we should be funding cultural endeavours that actually draw an audience, that people are actually interested in," said Kenney. "I'm not sure that's the case here." The breast milk, provided by six different women according to artist Jess Dobkin, will be pasteurized for health and safety reasons. But that consideration didn't seem top of mind for federal Health Minister Tony Clement. "A chacun son gout," - to each his own tastes, said Clement, before quickly adding, "It's not for me." An aide interjected that the funding would have come from the arts council. "Yes, thank goodness it didn't come from us, let's put it that way," agreed the minister.
http://www.cjad.com/node/369728
Art school serves up breast milk cocktail
Jun. 16, 2006. 08:44 AM
JUDY STOFFMAN
ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER
Mother's milk may be the healthiest food for babies, but is it art?
Yes, according to Jess Dobkin, a lesbian mother and artist who will present her work Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar on July 13 at the Ontario College of Art and Design, the institution of higher learning that a few years ago brought you vomiting as performance art.
The audience will be invited to sip during cocktail hours (5 to 8 p.m.) small cups of pasteurized breast milk donated by six lactating new mothers in the community. Dobkin has obtained a breast milk pasteurizer and will have the milk tested by a lab.
"I am taking all precautions," she said in an interview. "Donors have all been screened."
She is also designing a unique serving vessel for each woman. "I conducted interviews with all the donors and I worked with each to envision the appropriate serving device, the way different glasses are used for red or white wine. The vessel is designed to bring out the uniqueness of each woman's milk."
Following the "tasting," there will be an artist's talk and discussion.
Dobkin, who came to Toronto from New York, and has received grants from the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council, said in a news release she became interested in taboos surrounding breastfeeding.
"This project re-contextualizes something often regarded as indecent or repellent, offering a celebratory view," the 36-year-old said. "A substance that nourishes us in our infancy later becomes a curiosity in adulthood."
Toronto Star
Performance artist offers breast milk tastings
Jun. 15, 2006. 06:10 PM
MIKE FUHRMANN
CANADIAN PRESS
A performance artist is inviting people to ``quench their curiosity" and taste samples of pasteurized human breast milk at her upcoming show.
Jess Dobkin has titled her work the Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar.
"Participants will have the opportunity to sample small quantities of breast milk, donated by local lactating new mothers at this free public tasting," said a news release.
The work will be staged July 13 at the Ontario College of Art and Design Professional Gallery.
Dobkin, described in the release as a single lesbian mother of a 1-year-old daughter, said in an interview that the event will be in the spirit of a wine tasting.
"It will be like an actual bar with bar stools and . . . there will be tasting menus," she said Thursday. "I'll be bartending."
Dobkin said she's not worried about running out of the milk donated by six women for the show.
"The women donated generously. And people are going to be tasting small quantities of the milk. It's not going to be like `here's a glass of milk for you.' I'm going to ration it out."
Dobkin, who has given performances and presented artist's talks and workshops at galleries and universities throughout North America, said she became interested in taboos surrounding breastfeeding.
"This project re-contextualizes something often regarded as indecent or repellent, offering a celebratory view," the 36-year-old Toronto-based artist said in the release.
"A substance that nourishes us in our infancy later becomes a curiosity in adulthood. Though many drink it exclusively for the first months of life, the memory of that taste and the sensation of drawing milk from the breast are forgotten. No two women's milk tastes the same, and is influenced by things we ingest and our unique biology."
As for possible health concerns, a publicist for the show said Dobkin is using the same screening and pasteurization process as a Vancouver breast milk bank.
"She contacted them and got their health and safety procedures and that's what she's following," said Amy Stewart of DW Communications.
The Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar is partly funded by a $9,000 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Toronto Star
Breast milk on tap as performance art
'Welcome curiosity'
Zosia Bielski, National Post
Published: Friday, June 16, 2006
A Toronto artist will offer members of the public breast milk at a performance artwork that celebrates the "most intimate of motherhood rites" next month.
Jess Dobkin's Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar will give the curious a chance to taste pasteurized and cultured breast milk, donated by six local lactating new mothers, all screened.
It will be followed be an artist discussion.
"It comes out of my own experience of being a new mom," said Ms. Dobkin, who is lesbian and a single mother of a one-year-old daughter.
Breast milk came on Ms. Dobkin's artistic radar after she had trouble breast-feeding.
"It was difficult for me when we weren't able to do it in the end, not to feel that I was somehow a failure, that I was somehow not a good mom," said Ms. Dobkin, who attended a lactation clinic.
She said her work addresses the heavy burden society places on women to become "supermoms," expected to breast-feed without problem and do so out of sight.
"The breast is always and still seen as a sexualized object, and very much an object, and not part of a woman's body," she said.
Throughout the performance, the artist will screen excerpts from interviews she conducted with her donors. Many tasted their milk, with some saying it was like ice cream, soy milk and rice milk. Other mothers had trouble pinpointing their milk's "unique taste."
Breast milk is affected by the food a woman eats, her biology and her baby's development; no two women's milk tastes the same.
The artist insists she isn't looking for controversy. "I'm creating an environment that's welcoming, and I welcome people's interest and curiosity."
The work is part of Fado Performance's FIVE HOLES: Matters of Taste series, which explores the five senses and human mouths as "a point of contact with the external world" through a partial grant from Canada Council for the Arts.
The free public tasting gets under way at 5 p.m. on Thursday, July 13, at the Ontario College of Art & Design Professional Gallery.
© National Post 2006
Breast milk bar fails to raise Tory ire; federal arts funding at arm's length
National News
By: BRUCE CHEADLE OTTAWA (CP) - The federal Conservative government says it won't lay a hand on the Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar. A Toronto performance artist is offering the public an opportunity to sample human breast milk, in the spirit of wine tasting, and the lesbian single mother is using a $9,000 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to help get the creative juices flowing. That's the kind of avant garde stuff that used to make Conservative MPs paw the earth in opposition. Tories and their Canadian Alliance and Reform party forebears have teed off over the past decade on government arts funding for everything from Bubbles Galore, a soft-porn art film, to Scatalogue: 30 Years of Crap in Contemporary Art, to a masturbating Mexican and the controversial "flesh dress" - a 23-kilogram flank steak number that once hung in the National Gallery. "The whole concept is just totally obscene and one thin dime of public money going to something like this would be 10 cents too much," B.C. MP Jim Abbott fumed in 2001 over Mexican artist Israel Mora's ejaculate, on display in a cooler at the Banff Centre. Today, Abbott is parliamentary secretary to Heritage Minister Bev Oda and a more reticent art critic. Inquiries to his office Friday about the lactation station prompted a return call from Oda's spokesman, Robert Paterson, who said the Canada Council for the Arts operates at arm's length from the government. "I can't offer an official view on this particular program," said Paterson. "It would be inappropriate for the minister to interfere directly." The Conservative government, added Paterson, continues to support funding for artists who have "a positive message for Canadians." Jason Kenney, parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, reacted with bemusement rather than anger to the breast milk sampler, which is scheduled for July 13 at the Ontario College of Art & Design Professional Gallery. "Personally I think we should be funding cultural endeavours that actually draw an audience, that people are actually interested in," said Kenney. "I'm not sure that's the case here." The breast milk, provided by six different women according to artist Jess Dobkin, will be pasteurized for health and safety reasons. But that consideration didn't seem top of mind for federal Health Minister Tony Clement. "A chacun son gout," - to each his own tastes, said Clement, before quickly adding, "It's not for me." An aide interjected that the funding would have come from the arts council. "Yes, thank goodness it didn't come from us, let's put it that way," agreed the minister.
http://www.cjad.com/node/369728
Art school serves up breast milk cocktail
Jun. 16, 2006. 08:44 AM
JUDY STOFFMAN
ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER
Mother's milk may be the healthiest food for babies, but is it art?
Yes, according to Jess Dobkin, a lesbian mother and artist who will present her work Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar on July 13 at the Ontario College of Art and Design, the institution of higher learning that a few years ago brought you vomiting as performance art.
The audience will be invited to sip during cocktail hours (5 to 8 p.m.) small cups of pasteurized breast milk donated by six lactating new mothers in the community. Dobkin has obtained a breast milk pasteurizer and will have the milk tested by a lab.
"I am taking all precautions," she said in an interview. "Donors have all been screened."
She is also designing a unique serving vessel for each woman. "I conducted interviews with all the donors and I worked with each to envision the appropriate serving device, the way different glasses are used for red or white wine. The vessel is designed to bring out the uniqueness of each woman's milk."
Following the "tasting," there will be an artist's talk and discussion.
Dobkin, who came to Toronto from New York, and has received grants from the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council, said in a news release she became interested in taboos surrounding breastfeeding.
"This project re-contextualizes something often regarded as indecent or repellent, offering a celebratory view," the 36-year-old said. "A substance that nourishes us in our infancy later becomes a curiosity in adulthood."
Toronto Star
Performance artist offers breast milk tastings
Jun. 15, 2006. 06:10 PM
MIKE FUHRMANN
CANADIAN PRESS
A performance artist is inviting people to ``quench their curiosity" and taste samples of pasteurized human breast milk at her upcoming show.
Jess Dobkin has titled her work the Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar.
"Participants will have the opportunity to sample small quantities of breast milk, donated by local lactating new mothers at this free public tasting," said a news release.
The work will be staged July 13 at the Ontario College of Art and Design Professional Gallery.
Dobkin, described in the release as a single lesbian mother of a 1-year-old daughter, said in an interview that the event will be in the spirit of a wine tasting.
"It will be like an actual bar with bar stools and . . . there will be tasting menus," she said Thursday. "I'll be bartending."
Dobkin said she's not worried about running out of the milk donated by six women for the show.
"The women donated generously. And people are going to be tasting small quantities of the milk. It's not going to be like `here's a glass of milk for you.' I'm going to ration it out."
Dobkin, who has given performances and presented artist's talks and workshops at galleries and universities throughout North America, said she became interested in taboos surrounding breastfeeding.
"This project re-contextualizes something often regarded as indecent or repellent, offering a celebratory view," the 36-year-old Toronto-based artist said in the release.
"A substance that nourishes us in our infancy later becomes a curiosity in adulthood. Though many drink it exclusively for the first months of life, the memory of that taste and the sensation of drawing milk from the breast are forgotten. No two women's milk tastes the same, and is influenced by things we ingest and our unique biology."
As for possible health concerns, a publicist for the show said Dobkin is using the same screening and pasteurization process as a Vancouver breast milk bank.
"She contacted them and got their health and safety procedures and that's what she's following," said Amy Stewart of DW Communications.
The Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar is partly funded by a $9,000 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Toronto Star
Breast milk on tap as performance art
'Welcome curiosity'
Zosia Bielski, National Post
Published: Friday, June 16, 2006
A Toronto artist will offer members of the public breast milk at a performance artwork that celebrates the "most intimate of motherhood rites" next month.
Jess Dobkin's Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar will give the curious a chance to taste pasteurized and cultured breast milk, donated by six local lactating new mothers, all screened.
It will be followed be an artist discussion.
"It comes out of my own experience of being a new mom," said Ms. Dobkin, who is lesbian and a single mother of a one-year-old daughter.
Breast milk came on Ms. Dobkin's artistic radar after she had trouble breast-feeding.
"It was difficult for me when we weren't able to do it in the end, not to feel that I was somehow a failure, that I was somehow not a good mom," said Ms. Dobkin, who attended a lactation clinic.
She said her work addresses the heavy burden society places on women to become "supermoms," expected to breast-feed without problem and do so out of sight.
"The breast is always and still seen as a sexualized object, and very much an object, and not part of a woman's body," she said.
Throughout the performance, the artist will screen excerpts from interviews she conducted with her donors. Many tasted their milk, with some saying it was like ice cream, soy milk and rice milk. Other mothers had trouble pinpointing their milk's "unique taste."
Breast milk is affected by the food a woman eats, her biology and her baby's development; no two women's milk tastes the same.
The artist insists she isn't looking for controversy. "I'm creating an environment that's welcoming, and I welcome people's interest and curiosity."
The work is part of Fado Performance's FIVE HOLES: Matters of Taste series, which explores the five senses and human mouths as "a point of contact with the external world" through a partial grant from Canada Council for the Arts.
The free public tasting gets under way at 5 p.m. on Thursday, July 13, at the Ontario College of Art & Design Professional Gallery.
© National Post 2006