RE:SOUND 2019

In this 20 minute spoken record, Barkun recite all the medications, medical appointments and intimate measurements taken day-to-day during my fifth and final cycle of in vitro fertilization, which lasted 56 days. This diary uses voice to activate memory, as reading the list becomes a vehicle of translation for my multilayered experience. At times Barkun trip or stutter over scientific names of medications; these linguistic difficulties reflect my attempts to surmount all the foreign substances injected and ingested during the protocol. My body becomes increasingly medicalized for procreative means and in the end is confirmed as a dysfunctional space; the artwork ends with the thud of the final result: “zero embryos”. Her reproductive and medical failure is measured, calculated, and put on display. This speaking of her corporeal failure is a conscious act of resistance against the taboo of infertility, the veneration of science, and the normative voices of Western society.