Fertility Games: Lisa Moro’s Sport of Creation
Imagine as we go by our daily routines, sculptures float above us and around us - sculptures we can even walk though. These are objects we are oblivious to. Lisa Moro’s Fertility Games uses digital sculptures in this manner. She has a highly positive response to her inclusion in the Round Lemon X SHOUT exhibition:
“I am excited to be included in the Round Lemon Exhibition, the format is quite experimental for me and I have has a lot of fun trying it out and getting others to have a look. I like the range of work and the fact that many aspects of the gallery experience are replicated.”
What inspired you about your chosen ‘Shout Out’ video?
I was inspired to make the work by my research into the fertility industry. We live in very interesting times where something as intimate as conception can now happen outside of the body and can involve a number of bodies and the various processes can happen in multiple countries. An example could be a couple in the UK who could commission a baby using a surrogate in Ukraine, donated eggs from a woman in the USA and sperm donated in Canada. The creation of the embryo could happen in Italy. I have represented this using digital sculptures which are displayed on land mass style plinths.
Explain further about how your represent queerness through your work.
I think this work represents the conflicts which present themselves in the ways people might seek to create families. Huge corporations have created an industry worth billions and there are huge issues around who holds power with the very poorest women potentially exploited. When creating families in non heterosexual families what should the rules be and what are our boundaries, and where does consideration for the human being created lie?
I am intrigued by your video. Tell me more about the setting its link with your digital sculptures.
For the video piece, I set the piece in an active game of netball which I chose because of the synergy between games, tactics, scoring etc. with the activities of creating a baby which may involve navigating laws, preparation, picking candidates for donation of eggs and sperm and picking potential surrogate mothers.
I like that the players are unaware of the huge digital sculptures around them as they are young women and perhaps have not thought about what these issues will mean for them yet.
Should Fertility Games be an Olympic sport?
In some sense these are already an Olympic sport: Fertility Games is about sport being a metaphor for the commercial fertility industry and so too are games like the Olympics. This is because there is so many things at play including fitness, strategizing, learning rules, and breaking rules. It is also very international, with changes of citizenship to meet requirements. This works on so many levels, with elements of team work then aspects of personal achievement, the very physical throwing of the ball from one person to the other, like the moving of cells or a sperm aiming to enter the egg. Like sport, for some people they might be naturally more able to succeed in their goal, for others it may simply be impossible.
I realised, looking back at my submission that I was submitting under the category: Using the Body as a Material, and I think this is something which interested me as we are using the capacity of our bodies but in a very different way - taking each of the elements of fertility outside of the body and commercialising them.
Phrases such as ‘commission a baby’ and ‘candidates for donation’ really link to your explanation of this being an ‘industry’. What do you think the rules and boundaries should be?
I don’t think I would like to say what the rules should be, but hope my work provokes thought into the consequences of it becoming an industry. I do think when considering these issues, the decisions should be centred on the rights of the child. I found out that Ancestry.com is worth 4.7 Billion. And I think this shows that humans have a huge need to find out about their roots to understand who they are. At one time sperm donors were completely anonymous, and this had to be overturned because of the protests from the children. So I think something important is complete transparency of who donated sperm or eggs, and the name and location of any surrogate as otherwise the children can end up in a distressing and long search for answers, and of course with DNA tests it is inevitable that they will find out eventually but this can be an upsetting way to discover who you are too.
