Clandestine Abortion, Adopt a Fetus
2005
Performance
I sit solely in a dimmed space, kneeling on a white sheet, wearing only a light blue night gown. I look tired, worn and slightly disheveled. Surrounding me is a large quantity of jelly beans, of all different colors, but of all the same fetus shaped size. I begin to consume the jelly beans, first a little bit, and then handfuls at a time, accepting them into my body's oral cavity. But as their sugary articifically flavored taste touches my tongue, I reject the matter. I reguritate, I spit on, I make an amorphus mess of sugar and gelatin. Each jelly bean can no longer be distinguished from another. I do this alone. It is my clandestine abortion.
Once all of the jelly beans have been accepted and rejected, I then take the mass before me, and transform it. I mold and mold until the shape takes the form of a baby, a true horror show child. I dress the baby in clothing that I have knit, prepared the mother as she waited for this moment, the mother that had to have her child, the mother that would do anything to have a child. I have adopted the fetus. I wrap the child in a blanket, and carry it and cuddle it, and hold it close (official performance ends). I continue to carry the child until it becomes so deformed that it falls apart. A life that has been brought into this world, only to be destroyed by the forces that created it.